
«t «t 


♦ v» 


. ♦ 

Âlï 


^4 > 

• — 

/H Xk» . 

^4 

h' ♦ 

* 4fr 

ly 

-'•'.? lr •< 

•*. . > «r 

• t ., 

•4 1 •! ' 



h« 

T # t i 

'M «* •• < 

s *- *-* 

~ ,w 

«fi 

> flÊP 

*> if4 1 

À î, , 1 * * 

9 t • ' 

» ** 1 

» .A 

• y ••» > «i 

•#vV 

«*• ^ 

r y* 

> ^ •+* 

• A 

a 4i « * * % m > 

t 

"T * 

• »• •• 


. % i 

• 

•+ 0 • f * 1 ^ • 

« • 

n • 



,» 

rv% 

Kf T 


yi >0 A /j4*^Vv 

fiy ■'• 'jïn *y içAr* 

# K// •* -a'^'j 

pu* 

i Tk* 


* ' 

». 

g 

* * v 

* ggû * 

r' » ■* “ntt^ 
i»*' • -* 

/r * ♦ ** 

»*• -«m / • 

E 

* ' 

1 V» • 

rt* •k.T'çZ< 
**’(■ ~ - y* 1 



















































I 
















I '• 

































































• ' 









1 


















• . ' ' 



. 




* 

- 














































































































































































MY COUSIN 

MISS CINDERELLA 


(MA COUSINE POT-AU-FEU) 


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF 

LEON DE TINSEAU 

I i 


By E. W. NAYLOR 

TRANSLATOR OF “THE STORY OF COLETTE” 


copyright- 

JAN 24 1889 ' 

\ 

\^h»ngtO^ 


NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1889 




Coi 
- \ 


Copyright, 1889, 

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


I. 

My parents sent me, later than is usual, to 
the school at Poitiers, kept by Jesuits — do you 
understand, “by Jesuits”? — which does not 
hinder the fact that the mere suggestion that 
I should take my first communion anywhere 
but at home, made my mother very indignant 
Let me hasten to add that her indignation was 
of short duration, for the question was settled 
as she wished. My father loved this best and 
most pious of women devotedly, but I think he 
loved peace and quiet nearly as well. To es- 
cape a discussion he would even have gone to 
America, though he confessed that he had never 
set foot on anything afloat, except the little boat 
from which he and the game-keeper shot ducks 
in winter. 

He was married some time 'after he was 


4 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


thirty years old, for at that time we were 
never in a hurry. This marriage, happy as it 
was, was certainly the only noteworthy event 
of his life since the day when he would natu- 
rally have become a soldier, as, from the time 
of St. Louis all the Vandelnays in the world 
had been, when they were not in orders. But 
the revolution of 1830 had put an end to this 
custom, and my grandparents, as well as their 
son, would have considered the name compro- 
mised if one of the family had passed even a 
quarter of an hour in the service of Louis 
Philippe. 

I suppose that my father must have passed 
some lonely hours when he came back to 
Vandelnay after two years spent at school, 
where life was certainly less sad and severe. 
If so, he accepted it like a philosopher, that is 
to say, with resignation, for at the time when 
we began to be intimate — I mean when I was 
five or six years old — this resignation was per- 
fect. 

At this time we were eight in number at 
Vandelnay — I mean eight “masters,” to employ 
the usual expression, though the title only be- 
longed in reality to one of the inhabitants of 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


5 


the chateau, my grandfather, even then very 
old, but astonishingly well preserved. Besides 
my grandfather, there was a younger brother, 
and two sisters who were older — all three un- 
married, and my grandmother, to whom we all 
looked up as to a wonderful being ; for, as a 
child she had been in the prisons of the Ter- 
ror. These composed a sort of council of an- 
cients, honored with certain prerogatives. In 
my frequent conversations with myself, having 
no one else to talk with, I designated these 
persons as the “ ancestors.” 

The three other inhabitants of the chateau 
— that is to say, my parents and myself — formed 
an inferior caste, excluded from all part in the 
government, even in the examination of busi- 
ness. But, as in all well-constituted mon- 
archies, each of the inhabitants of Vandelnay, 
though submissive and obedient to those above 
him, was listened to by those beneath him as 
a representative of the supreme authority. 

This discipline, harmonious, because per- 
fect, which still excites my admiration and re- 
grets when I think of it, manifested itself even 
in the numerous orders of servants, some of 
whom were so old that they were more a care 


6 


MY COUSIN ; MASS CINDERELLA. 


than a help. But it was the rule at Vandel- 
nay that a servant left the house only in his 
coffin or for some grave offense, two phenom- 
ena about equally rare, thanks to the good 
air and food and to the subordination which 
reigned in the chateau and its dependencies. 

To return to the “masters,” I was, it is un- 
necessary to say, the only one whose duty 
was always to obey, never to command. Of 
course, I speak of recognized authority, for I 
really exercised a secret tyranny over all the 
servants, except the cook and the gardener, 
who were very unmanageable, probably on 
account of their special knowledge. 

To go into the kitchen without passport 
from competent authority was punished by a 
dish-cloth attached to my waist. As for the 
gardens, the part reserved for fruit was a real 
theatre of war for me, constantly infested by the 
presence of the enemy — the gardener — where I 
never ventured without the ruses of an Apache. 
And what a joy it was when I could taste the 
stolen unripe fruit of the peach-trees or the 
acid pulp of the grapes! One of the most 
vivid remembrances of my childhood is of a 
certain autumn when the country was deci- 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


7 


mated by cholera. The general terror was 
such that all the fruits considered dangerous 
were left to rot on the trees. Such was my 
good fortune, that of all the household, the 
only one who took the disease was my enemy 
the gardener, from which, happily, he recov- 
ered. But during those three delightful weeks 
I consumed more plums and apricots than in all 
my past or after life. The doctors must for- 
give me — for if the fruit did not kill me it was 
certainly not my fault. 

In the regular order of nature I was under 
the direct authority of my mother, who was 
herself, apparently, subject to the authority of 
her husband. I have strong reasons for sus- 
pecting that this apparent submission concealed 
a very different reality, for I have known few 
more beautiful women or more tender hus- 
bands. Except some solemn reproofs, made 
necessary by a grave fault, which impressed 
me deeply for at least forty-eight hours, my 
father interfered with my life only during two 
or three hours in the afternoon, when I went 
out with him on foot or driving, and, when I 
was old enough, on horseback. I think it is 
rarely possible to have at once such respect, 


8 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

fear, and love, as I had for him. It seemed as 
if he united several systems of education in his 
person. Severe, unapproachable, rarely smiling 
when we were in the vicinity of the château or 
park, he began to unbend and to descend from 
his level as soon as we got beyond the last 
trees of the avenue. When the pointed tow- 
ers were out of sight, he was gay, affectionate, 
caressing, hardly older than I was — a compan- 
ion who did exactly as I wished, but to whom 
in my demands I did not give credit, for when 
we were once at home, a wish which he would 
at once have gratified before we got there, 
was as impossible to obtain as if I had asked 
for the moon. 

I rarely saw the older generation except at 
meal-time, and these for me were the most 
terrible hours of the day. At eleven o’clock 
all the family met in the dining-room. My 
grandfather, of course, sat at the head of the 
table, having one of his sisters on each side. 
They were older than he and unmarried, as 
after the catastrophe of ’93 husbands of noble 
race were hard to find. They were nearly 
ninety years old, and I shall astonish no one 
in saying that they were not particularly re- 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


9 


markable for their amiability. Tall, majestic, 
perfectly erect, one a brunette, the other a 
blonde (I was nearly fifteen years old when I 
discovered that they wore wigs), they seemed 
each to remember but one thing of all their 
past experiences. The elder had had the hon- 
or of opening the ball at Poitiers with mon- 
sieur, the brother of the king, at the time of 
the restoration of the Bourbons. The other 
had aided the Duchess de Berri in a difficult 
situation, in 1832, taking her past the troops 
of Louis Philippe in her carriage. Twenty 
times I have shuddered at the recital of this 
odyssy which ended happily, thanks to my 
aunt’s presence of mind, which at the critical 
moment had dissipated the soldiers’ suspicions 
by ordering the princess, who was disguised 
as a waiting-maid, to tie her shoe — a thing of 
which she was not a little proud. 

Their brother, who sat on the other side of 
the table, at the right of my grandmother, 
was hardly seventy years old. For this rea- 
son they treated him like a young man who 
had never done anything very useful, for dur- 
ing the first forty years of his life he had trav- 
eled all over Europe. My Uncle John as- 


IO 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


sumed the airs of an artist, and professed an 
independence of judgment with regard to the 
latest events in our national history that was 
then learned in foreign countries, but which 
one could learn now without going away from 
home. Besides, he sometimes spoke of certain 
beautiful women whom he had known. He 
was certainly discreet — I never heard him 
pronounce a name — for he preserved a strict re- 
serve, and his reminiscences would seem com- 
monplace and trivial in contrast with the con- 
fidences made in recreation hours by the older 
classes in our schools of to-day. Nevertheless, 
I quite understoôd that his sisters and sister- 
in-law looked upon him as a wild young fel- 
low, whose tenets as regarding religion, poli- 
tics, and manners, must be accepted with 
caution. 

For this unavowed reason it was not with- 
out secret anxiety that the “ ancestors ” saw 
my private talks with him, and, without seem- 
ing to do so, they discouraged them as much 
as possible. As was to be foreseen, there was 
nothing I liked better in the world than to 
hear my Uncle John’s stories. 

One day when I was climbing on his knees 


MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. n 

and running my hands through his hair, I felt 
something like a hollow in his head. 

“ What made that, uncle ?” I asked. 

“A pistol-ball.” 

“ Ah ! why were you shot at with a pistol ? ” 
“ Because I fought.” 

“ Against the enemy ? ” 

“ No ; against a gentleman.” 

“ What had he done to you ? ” 

“ You are too young to understand. But 
unless you want to make trouble for me, take 
care neither to speak of it nor of what I have 
told you to any one.” 

Very many years passed before I spoke to 
any one of my uncle’s wound or knew what 
the gentleman had against him. 

Child as I was, I already understood that 
there was a mystery about my Uncle John, 
which placed him, as it were, apart from the 
rest of the family. He was separated from 
them by a persistent melancholy, not certainly 
that the others were gay — it would have been 
as true to say that they were dissipated or 
gamblers — but his absolute sadness was far 
deeper than the absence of gayety, which was 
the normal state of the rest of the family. In 


12 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


the midst of this empty silence, of persons who 
did not speak because they had no thoughts, 
the solemn, dreamy silence of this man, whose 
intelligence struck even me, produced the con- 
trast of light to darkness, of heat to cold, of 
life to death. 

Besides, it was only necessary to see his 
strongly marked, worn countenance, often trav- 
ersed by sudden gleams of emotion, immedi- 
ately repressed, to understand that Uncle John 
differed from his relations of both sexes in 
having a history, which he was resolved to 
conceal. It was at him that I looked the most 
willingly during our long repasts — for octoge- 
narians eat slowly — and when I look back to 
those days, to the guests in the big dining- 
room of Vandelnay, they seem to me like fu- 
nereal statues, with only one whose eyes were 
bright with life. 

Of all the inhabitants of the chateau, my 
father and my Uncle John were the two who 
had the least in common. Disputes were not 
rare between them, and I must confess that 
it was my uncle who generally began, with- 
out any very good reason, as is the case when 
there is want of sympathy between two per- 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


3 


sons. I understand now that my Uncle John 
reproached his nephew with leading an idle, 
useless life. But in perfectly good faith my 
father considered this renunciation of the act- 
ive life of the day as a sacrifice full of merit. 

“We ought to obey the king!” 

How many times I have heard this phrase, 
which filled me with enthusiasm all the great- 
er that I did not understand it ! In spite of 
myself, my serenity was disturbed by the sad 
smile which I saw on my uncle’s face at such 
moments. Sometimes he did not content him- 
self with smiling. Two or three short sen- 
tences, without signification for me, were ex- 
changed, after which, as soon as he could get 
away, the baron retired to his room like a 
general-in-chief who, surrounded by superior 
forces, manoeuvres on unfavorable ground. At 
long intervals, he left Vandelnay for some days 
with one of his few friends on the pretext of 
hunting or fishing. Apparently, he was poor, 
and he seemed to take pleasure in saying so 
to any one who would listen. And this pov- 
erty was another of the things which surprised 
me ! How can my Uncle John be poor? He 
eats and dresses as we do, lives in the same 


14 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


château, rides in the same carriages — rarely, it 
is true ; bears the same name ! 

Such were some of the questions which tor- 
mented my young brain, and which I would 
have liked to ask. But I kept them back, as 
well as many others, knowing by experience 
that I was not allowed to ask questions, and 
shrinking from what is even now the greatest 
of trials for me, the refusal to grant a wish of 
mine by a person I love. After all, it is not 
so very hard to be silent. 


IL 


Every evening at Vandelnay, toward the 
middle of the “ master’s ” dessert, the bell of 
the chateau was rung, and the servants assem- 
bled in the stone-paved hall that served as 
their dining-room. Five minutes later my 
grandmother left her place, and, followed by 
us all, traversed the immense gallery which 
separated our apartments from those of the 
servants. In winter it was a real journey, full 
of dangers, because of the differences of tem- 
perature and the currents of air ; a journey 
which required many precautions in the form 
of wraps, cloaks, shawls, and hats, according to 
the sex and age. The gallery traversed, the 
procession majestically entered the hall, where 
the servants’ supper was spread on a long 
table, lighted by primitive brass lamps formed 
of a cup of oil in which a wick was burning. 
All the servants, about fifteen, waited standing 


1 6 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

for us. The family knelt on wooden chairs 
placed against the wall, which was yellow with 
smoke, turning their backs to the table. On 
the other side of it the servants knelt on the 
stone floor, having directly in front of them 
the line of earthen plates and cups on the 
table, and, farther on, the backs of three gen- 
erations of Vandelnays, succeeding to so many 
others who doubtless had prayed in the same 
place, in the same way, for four or five hun- 
dred years. 

My grandfather recited the prayers and 
litanies aloud, masters and servants devoutly 
responding in unison. When the final sign of 
the cross was made, there were a few minutes’ 
conversation between certain members of the 
family and the chiefs of the service, so to speak, 
for the simple domestic soldiers (grooms, scul- 
lery-maids, and under-seamstresses) retired into 
corners until the moment when the soup, al- 
ready smoking in the huge tureen, should be 
distributed by the strong hand of the cook. 
During thesë few minutes the work of the fol- 
lowing day was arranged. My grandfather con- 
ferred with the game-keeper ; my father gave his 
orders to the coachman ; my mother asked the 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


1 7 


gardener about the fruit and flowers — he, my 
enemy, who had solemnly sworn in the morn- 
ing to denounce me in the evening, and who, 
good man, never did it ! But what frightful 
moments I passed, and how well I understood 
the glances of the tyrant who had me at his 
mercy ! Occasionally, my grandfather, raising 
his voice, would make the official announce- 
ment of some family event, recommending de- 
cent behavior at the village festival next day, 
deploring a misfortune at some farm — hail, 
sickness among the cattle, or the conscription 
fallen on an eldest son — “and now, good-night 
my friends,” he would conclude — on the days 
when he was in good humor. 

And the answer always came almost in a 
whisper — a respectful murmur: 

“ Good-night, Monsieur le Marquis.” 

Then we returned to the salon through the 
Siberia of the long corridor, where knights 
shivered under their armor and ladies in their 
hoops. Near the big fire we found my aunts, 
who, poor things, had no orders to give, only 
possessing in this world — I have since learned 
why — what they took with all simplicity from 

the generosity of my grandfather. 

2 


1 8 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


We also found my Uncle John there, for he 
never joined in the evening prayer, a circum- 
stance so full of mystery in my eyes that I 
never had the courage to ask a question about 
it. But if I said nothing, I observed the more, 
and the facts I saw perplexed me about the 
orthodoxy of my Uncle John. 

On Sunday, it is true, he never failed to go 
to mass, and even waited impatiently for the 
moment to set out, it being one of his small 
weaknesses to be always ready half an hour too 
soon. But he slept through the sermon, and it 
required a strong disposition to sleep to be 
able to do it on the oak, polished by ages, of 
the armorial family pew. 

At the end of twenty minutes my Uncle 
John always awoke, a circumstance which gen- 
erally coincided with the end of the homily. 
But if our good curé had been carried away by 
his own eloquence, and exceeded the time, the 
baron drew an enormous repeater from his 
pocket and sounded it, so that it could be heard 
from one end of the church to the other. 

At this well-known signal, which always 
caused an emotion in the pious assembly, the 
poor Abbé Cassard turned his back to the al- 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


19 


tar, leaving us all to the mercy of the storm, 
without taking time to conduct us to the door 
of the sacred edifice, to which happily we all 
knew the way. 

From Easter-even to the second Sunday 
after Easter, this recalcitrant hearer invariably 
disappeared, without any one being able to tell 
the object of his journey, so that it was impossi- 
ble to answer the question — Will Uncle John 
keep Easter? 

Certainly the village curé, who dined at the 
chateau every Sunday, treated him not only 
with consideration, but respect. What was 
more remarkable still, during the game of whist, 
which was always played on that day after din- 
ner, and of which, as you may imagine, I only 
saw the beginning, my uncle did not spare the 
abbé, when he was his partner, the most severe 
reprimands. For the baron was celebrated in 
the whole province for having learned whist in 
England, just as he had learned to waltz in Ger- 
many and studied painting in Italy. “ In spite of 
all,” I said to myself, “ a hardened sinner could 
not have inspired such esteem in a priest, and 
above all a sinner would not have abused the 
priest when he trumped his best card.” 


III. 

I was nearly twelve years old, and the curé 
was preparing- me for my first communion at 
the same time that he taught me Greek and 
Latin, when the first event happened which 
disturbed the monotonous peace which since 
my birth had reigned over the chateau. One 
morning, although Easter-even was still far off, 
my Uncle John’s place was empty at table, and 
I was told that he had left in the night for Eng- 
land. All day long the family was a prey to 
the greatest anxiety. My grandfather was at 
the same time out of temper and deeply moved ; 
my grandmother and her sisters-in-law had red 
eyes and uttered deep sighs. They passed the 
greater part of the time kneeling before the 
altar of the Virgin, on which a huge wax-can- 
dle was burning. 

Faithful to my system, I asked no questions, 


MY COUSIN . ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


21 


but waited with impatience for the hour of 
prayer, supposing that we should have a mes- 
sage from the government, that is to say, a 
communication of some sort addressed by my 
grandfather to the family. 

Even to-day I shudder when I remember 
our dinner that day in the big dining-room, 
chilly with the first November days. It was 
not, as one might have supposed, that all re- 
mained in contemplation before empty plates. 
The Vandelnays, of an old and strong race, had 
nothing in common — especially then — with 
anæmics of to-day, whose appetites are gone 
if they have lost two louis at the races, or if a 
beautiful woman has looked coldly on them. 
We could eat, thank God ! But we ate on this 
day in the midst of a deathlike silence, broken 
only by the creaking of the parquet floor under 
the felt shoes of the servants. The “ ancestors” 
were so absorbed that I — a thing unknown be- 
fore — could refuse spinach without calling 
down upon myself the sophistical argument 
before which I had so often yielded — not with- 
out longing with all my heart for the age when 
I could do as I liked : 

“ If you do not eat spinach, it is that you are 


22 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


not hungry ; if you are not hungry, you can eat 
no dessert.” 

Alas, the irony of human nature ! Long 
years have passed since I was my own master. 
I am passionately fond of spinach, and dessert 
has no attraction for me. The sweets of life 
are long past ! 

The dinner ended, and we started as usual 
for our “ Siberia,” about as gay as the son of 
Theseus, when that unfortunate prince took his 
last walk. As we went, my grandmother seemed 
to be begging some favor of her husband, and, 
as far as I could judge, without success. I 
heard her insist : 

“ After all, my dear, she is a Christian, and 
our niece ! ” 

In the hall, everything passed as usual. But 
after the last prayer, instead of making the final 
sign of the cross, my grandfather remained for 
some minutes kneeling on his chair. He seemed 
to be struggling with himself. Suddenly lifting 
his head, he said in an unsteady voice : 

<( We will recite a Pater and ave for a sick 
person, a member of the family.” 

That was all. But by the use of handker- 
chiefs behind, among the servants, I understood 


COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


23 


that the young Antoine Rene-Gaston de Vandel- 
nay, was the only one present who did not know 
who the sick person was. 

Others in my place might not have been 
able to refrain any longer from asking ques- 
tions. With me, although my best friends ac- 
cuse me of obstinacy, the result was different. I 
would have seen the chateau demolished stone 
by stone, without asking the cause of the catas- 
trophe. At the bottom of my heart, I believed 
that the explanations would come of themselves 
— in which I was deceived. Evidently my 
proud silence suited everybody. 

Two days passed thus, with successive wax- 
candles in the chapel and renewed “ Paters ” at 
evening prayer. The third day a telegram ar- 
rived early in the morning, and all the family — 
myself, of course, excepted — met immediately 
in my grandmother’s room — an unheard-of pro- 
ceeding, for, between the hours of mass and 
breakfast, this sanctuary was never open, ex- 
cept to the cook, the housekeeper, the man 
who did errands in town, or the sisters who 
took care of the poor and the sick of the vil- 
lage. But on that day all our habits seemed to 
be upset ; breakfast was a quarter of an hour 


24 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


late, and my mother started for Poitiers after 
a long conversation with her mother-in-law and 
aunts. Merino, crape, black cloth, dressmaker, 
milliner, gloves — these significant words had 
struck my ears for an hour. Some near rela- 
tion was dead. But who ? It was not my uncle, 
for I had heard this phrase pronounced by my 
grandmother : 

“ I think poor John will return at once.” 

In the evening my grandfather said, as his 
only funeral oration: 

“ We will recite a De profiindis for my niece, 
who will be buried to-morrow in England.” 

At the words “ De profundis ,” some care- 
fully repressed sobs were heard, but not among 
the “masters.” To judge from appearances, 
my grandmother and my aunts had wept all 
their tears in their rooms, for their eyes were 
very red ; but to weep before servants would 
have been a weakness unworthy of them. 

As for me, I knew now that a relative had 
just died in England, but that was all. The 
degree of relationship, the name, age, and sta- 
tion in life of the person were all so many mys- 
teries for me. At the bottom of my heart I 
resented the ignorance in which I was left. In 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


the evening, when I was undressed, my mother 
made me try on a suit of mourning. This was 
the last drop ; I could contain myself no longer. 

“ Doubtless,” I said, “ this is the first time 
that one has put on mourning without knowing 
even the name of the dead person.” 

“ What ! ” my mother exclaimed ; “ has ' no 
one told you?” 

“No,” I replied; “but I ask no questions. 
Other people may keep their secrets ; I will 
keep mine — when I have any.” 

The threat was not dangerous; but my 
mother felt emotion, perhaps remorse, for, tak- 
ing me on her knees and putting her arms 
around me, “ My dear child,” she repeated, 
“ they have told you nothing ! It is that we 
have all been so troubled and sorry for your 
poor Uncle John.” 

“But who is dead?” I said, giving up for 
once my cherished pride. 

“It is his daughter who is dead.” 

“My Uncle John was married?” 

My poor mother raised her eyes to heaven 
with the despairing agony of a sailor, who, 
driven among rocks, looks for the lighthouse 
that will guide him to a harbor. 


2 6 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

“ He was married a long time ago,” she 
said. “ Your aunt has been dead for many 
years. She left an only daughter, who has 
just died.” 

“Why is it, then,” I asked, resolved, now 
I had begun, to know all, “ how is it, then, 
that no one has ever told me of the life and 
death of my aunt? What was her name? Did 
she not live at Vandelnay?” 

The idea of a member of the family who 
lived anywhere else than in the château, but, 
above all, the idea of Uncle John, married and 
a father, plunged me in astonishment. My 
mother replied : 

“Your uncle, while he was in Italy, married 
an Italian. Your aunt never came here. No 
member of the family ever saw her.” 

“ But her daughter — the one who has just 
died?” I asked. 

“ We have never seen her. You must never 
speak of her, especially to your uncle.” 

I naturally prepared to ask why, but I saw 
in my mother’s face such a dread of this ques- 
tion that, for the moment, I gave it up ; be- 
sides, I had sufficient food for thought in the 
events of the past four days and the facts 


MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


27 


I had just learned. I had a profound love 
for my mother, and, even without the rigid dis- 
cipline in which I had been brought up, the 
fear of displeasing her would have closed my 
lips. Feigning a calm which I certainly did 
not feel, I replied : 

“Very well, mamma, I will say nothing. 
You may trust me.” 

One of those sweetest of kisses, so much re- 
gretted when they fail us, recompensed me for 
my submission, and I pretended to go to sleep ; 
but all night I could not close my eyes, and, in 
the darkness of my room, I seemed to see the 
wife of Uncle John, the Italian, whom no mem- 
ber of the family had ever seen. I pictured her 
to myself like something in one of my books — 
very dark, with big black eyes, and heavy 
braids of hair with two pins with large gold 
heads. I saw her distinctly, with a white cloth 
folded square on her head, her coral necklace, 
her white bodice with puffed sleeves, and the 
basket of flowers, which she probably carried 
for her own pleasure, for it was impossible for 
me to admit that the Baroness de Vandelnay 
would sell roses like an ordinary Italian. 

As the day was breaking I fell asleep for an 


28 MY COUSIN ; Æf/55 CINDERELLA. 

hour, and when they came to waken me for the 
mass, in which all the inhabitants of the chateau 
joined every morning, it seemed to me that all 
I had heard and thought was a complicated, 
fatiguing dream. 

But a quarter of an hour later when I saw 
every one in mourning and the mourning em- 
blems on the curé’s shoulders, whose acolyte I 
was, I had to accept the fact. 

Except the absence of my Uncle John, our 
black clothes, and a greater strictness of disci- 
pline, there was no evidence that the Vandel- 
nays had just lost a near relative ; and my poor 
cousin — I should have found it difficult to name 
her — scarcely had more notice after than before 
her death. 

But this calm was treacherous, and not to 
last. 


IV. 


Two days after, an hour before dinner, I 
was in the vestibule occupied in manoeuvring 
my leaden soldiers, when a carriage stopped 
before the door. By the cracked sound of the 
bells I recognized a carriage from the town. I 
hurried out, leaving my soldiers to take care of 
themselves, to see what unexpected visitor 
could be coming so late. I had completely 
forgotten my Uncle John, who had now been 
gone for more than a week. It was he ; but I 
recognized him with difficulty, he was so 
wrapped up in coats and scarfs. Besides, I 
must confess that, even superficially as I knew 
his history, he no longer seemed to me the 
same man. Thus, it was with a certain timidity 
that I went toward him to bid him welcome ; 
but he scarcely seemed to see me. 

“ How do you do! How do you do?” he 
replied, turning his back to me to take from the 


30 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


somber depths of the carriage a heavy parcel, 
which was given him by an almost invisible 
shadow. 

He went up the steps without difficulty, 
while the shadow, a feminine shadow, as nearly 
as I could make ont, got out of the carriage. 

“ Open the door of the salon for me,” he or- 
dered, briefly. 

I obeyed ; we entered the large room, which 
was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp placed in 
the middle of a table. My uncle went to a sofa 
upon which he deposited his burden, and draw- 
ing aside some folds I saw — you may imagine 
with what surprise — a little girl asleep. 

It was with difficulty that I refrained from 
an exclamation of fright, first, because the child 
in her immobility looked as if she might be 
dead, and also because my uncle, who a week 
before was noted for his youthful appearance, 
seemed suddenly to have aged twenty years. 
He was bent and deformed and broken, so to 
speak, as my leaden soldiers were when I acci- 
dentally stepped on them. His handsome face, 
which before had expressed an energy which 
some people considered too haughty, now ex- 
pressed a kind of sad humility, a distrust of 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


31 


himself and of everything, heart-rending even 
to so careless an observer as I was. I stood 
there with my mouth and eyes open, not know- 
ing what to do or say, more sad than curious, 
feeling that in a minute or two more I should 
burst into tears. 

Happily my uncle said, in what appeared to 
me a hard voice : 

“ Go up to your grandmother’s room, and 
ask her to come here quite alone ; quite alone, 
do you hear? Go quickly, and say nothing 
more.” 

I went bounding up the long staircase. I 
seemed very important to myself, because of the 
part which I was accidentally playing in what 
appeared to me an astonishing drama, and weak, 
on account of the sentiment I had of my own 
incapacity to grapple with such extraordinary 
events. 

“ Grandmother,” I cried, out of breath, and 
forgetting the respectful etiquette which was the 
rule at Yandelnay, “you must go down to the 
salon quick, quick ! And above all, go alone. 
Oh, if you only knew ...” 

If such a message had been so delivered to 
a young woman she would probably have fallen 


32 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


in hysterics. But my valiant grandmother, like 
many of her contemporaries, had seen a part of 
many sad scenes. She rose, put in her pocket 
something which was probably her rosary, and 
asked me : 

“What is it? A visit?” 

“ My Uncle John ! ” I answered, putting my 
finger on my lips, and speaking almost in a 
whisper. 

Then I went out, or rather I fled, as the best 
means of not being obliged to say any more. 
In my heart I was delighted to see the parts re- 
versed. Now it was I who left the others 
in ignorance, refusing to answer their ques- 
tions. 

To tell the truth, there was no great merit 
in answering. Where did this little girl come 
from? Each time that Uncle John came back 
from a journey he brought some foreign animal, 
which was generally unwelcome — canaries from 
Holland, marmots from the Alps, dogs from the 
Pyrenees, turtles from Egypt, monkeys from 
Algiers — I had seen all these specimens of the 
animal kingdom appear with his luggage. But 
a little girl ! that was a novelty, and as I came 
down the stairs, leaving the doors open behind 


MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


33 


me, for decidedly anarchy reigned, I asked my- 
self : 

“ Will they make her a cage, to which I shall 
go to feed her with milk and lettuce-leaves dur- 
ing my play-hours?” 

When I returned to the room, Uncle John’s 
new acquisition was still asleep, and he was 
kneeling before the sofa, eagerly watching it 
From time to time he exchanged unintelligible 
sounds with a young woman of modest appear- 
ance, on whose head was a strange object in 
black straw, who was also watching the child, 
without paying any more attention to her sur- 
roundings — even to my humble person — than if 
she had lived there for ten years. Uncle John, 
radiant and absorbed, seemed in an ecstasy of 
prayer, and I could not help reflecting that I 
had never seen him so reverential, even on Sun- 
day at the moment of the elevation of the host. 

We stood like the animals in the stable 
around the infant Jesus when my grandmother 
appeared. My uncle, still kneeling, turned 
slightly, so that it seemed to be to the chatelaine 
of Vandelnay that he addressed his prayer. 

“ Sister,” he said, in a gentle, timorous 
voice — and as he spoke I could see the trace 
3 


34 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


left by the pistol-ball on his head — “ she had a 
little girl. Will you, in the name of the God 
you worship, receive the poor little orphan 
under your roof?” 

Since then I have seen in women’s eyes 
flashes of the passions, tendernesses, or enthu- 
siasms which make them frightful or sublime. 
I have never seen goodness, compassion, the 
gentle light of charity, so completely beautify 
a countenance. Oh, my grandmother, how 
deeply I thank you for having made my blonde 
head understand something to which my gray 
head still holds, though it has thrown away so 
many other articles of men’s creeds ! Yes, of all 
the reasons for worshiping women, the strong- 
est is their goodness — when they are good. 

It would have been impossible to have 
reached the age of eleven in a chateau of 
Poiton under the second republic, without 
having read stories of children who had been 
received and taken care of by charitable souls ; 
and surely a more charitable soul than the 
Marchioness of Vandelnay could not have been 
found from Tours to Angouleme. 

I of course expected, above all, after the 
look I had seen, to see my grandmother take 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


35 


her niece to her arms, for I quite understood 
that it was her niece and my own cousin who 
was sleeping there the resigned sleep of the 
lamb separated from its mother. I wanted to 
cry out to my uncle: 

“ Rise ! it seems too much as if you prayed 
for some difficult thing ! ” 

Probably the poor baron knew better than 
I did the difficulty of the thing he asked, for 
he remained on his knees, partly looking at 
the child who gave signs of waking, and part- 
ly at my grandmother who seemed to reflect. 
Ah ! if any one had told me the day before 
that “ our mistress,” as the villagers called her, 
would required time for reflection before re- 
ceiving — not an orphan of the blood of Van- 
delnay — but even the child of the most miser- 
able beggar! 

As if to gain time, my grandmother asked 
this question, which, under the circumstances, 
seemed to me useless : 

“ My poor John, why did you not tell us 
that she had a daughter?” 

My uncle replied, pressing his lips together 
as if he would crush the words as they came 


out. 


36 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

“ Simply because I did not know it” 

“Poor little dear; she looks like you.” 

I had always considered the judgments of 
my grandmother as infallible ; but for once 
doubt entered into my soul. If this little 
rosy face, surrounded by tangled black hair, 
resembled the parchment-colored visage with 
a gray mustache, surmounted by short hair 
which stood on end, one might as well say 
that I was like the horned devils sculptured 
over the great door of Saint Radegonde. 

“ Wait for me,” said my grandmother, sud- 
denly ; “ I must speak to him who is master 
here. Let us hope that he will consent.” 

While they were speaking the child had 
awakened, and without moving, was turning 
her big, frightened eyes all about, eyes that 
were so black that I thought them like little 
balls of coal in milk. My grandmother 
asked : 

“ What is the child’s name ? ” 

“ Rosamonde.” 

I saw that this strange name did not pro- 
duce a favorable impression on the listener. 
Nevertheless, the chatelaine leaned tenderly 
over her little neice to kiss her ; but the 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


3 7 

child, at the sight of the strange face so near 
her own, began to cry. 

“ For heaven’s sake, make her keep still,” 
cried my grandmother, as she drew back, 
rather discouraged. 

I thought to myself : 

“ Rosamonde, my dear, you are doing a 
very stupid thing for your first appearance at 
Vandelnay, not to wish to kiss grandmother!” 

Already the woman with the black straw 
hat had gone to her charge, and was trying, 
in her strange language, to quiet her. 

“Wait for me,” repeated my grandmother. 
“ I am going to speak to my husband. Gaston, 
go and work at your lessons until dinner-time.” 


V. 


While I worked at my lessons I listened, 
so as to try to guess what would be the fate of 
poor Rosamonde ; for the chateau was so vast 
that a funeral and a ball might have been tak- 
ing place at the two extremities without their 
respective guests being aware of one another’s 
presence. 

But when I entered the large dining-room 
an hour later, I understood that all had been 
happily arranged. Miss Rosamonde was al- 
ready seated in a high - chair — formerly my 
property — at the other end of the table. The 
discipline of Yandelnay was such that each 
one seated himself without seeming to no- 
tice the new comer, who, on the contrary, 
examined all these new faces with a kind of 
fright, happily in silence. Served by her nurse, 
she ate quietly and with good appetite, watched 
surreptitiously by eight pairs of eyes, or, more 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


39 


strictly speaking*, seven, for the head of the 
family never once turned toward the poor 
child. At length I was alarmed to see that she 
fell asleep, for I well knew, by experience, the 
penalties of such an infraction of discipline. I 
wished that I could be at her side to pinch 
her, so as to spare her the troubles which 
were before her. But evidently an amnesty 
had been pronounced for this first evening, for 
no one seemed to see the offense. When the 
time came to go to the hall for prayers, my 
uncle said a few words in English — I have 
learned the language since then — to his grand- 
daughter’s nurse, who awakened her gently. 

Then they all three went toward the door 
to the right, which led to the apartments, while 
the rest of the family went to that to the left, 
opening on the gallery. At this moment the 
storm which had been averted broke out when 
we least expected it. My grandfather stopped 
short, and, turning toward the group of three, 
he asked, in a voice which we rarely heard, but 
which always caused me to tremble in all my 
members : 

“ Why does not this child come to pray 
with the rest of us?” 


40 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


A slight emotion showed itself on my Uncle 
John’s face, as if he saw a danger. He an- 
swered in these words, which were distinctly 
heard in the general silence : 

“ Because she is Protestant, brother.” 

It is absolutely certain that such words had 
never before been heard in the chateau. God 
forbid that I should revive remembrances over 
which the dust of generations, become indiffer- 
ent, has accumulated I If I have reason to be 
proud of the history of the Vandelnays of all 
ages, I do not fear to confess that there are 
many episodes due to a religion opposed to that 
professed by poor Rosamonde which I would 
willingly see effaced. My ancestors were not 
lukewarm when they struck in the name of the 
king ; but when there was a question of relig- 
ion they did not spare, and woe to him who 
was opposed to them ! In those times I would 
not have given much for the life of a member 
of the family if he had ventured to make such 
a profession of faith as that I had just heard. 
But years had passed, and the reign of Louis 
Philippe bore but a slight resemblance to that 
of Charles IX or Louis XIV. 

But my grandfather had hardly got beyond 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


41 


the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for, since 
the taking of the Bastile, which happened when 
he was twenty-five years old, the clock of time 
seemed to have stood still for the inhabitants 
of the chateau, as happens in houses shaken by 
an earthquake. 

It is probable that the dear old man was 
hardly more shaken by the news of the death 
of Louis XVI than he was on the memorable 
evening when he learned that his brother’s 
granddaughter was a heretic. It is needless to 
say that, at that time, I was incapable of mak- 
ing such reflections, but I remember vividly 
to-day the shudder which passed through me 
at the look which the head of the family cast at 
the innocent renegade. Fortunately, in that 
generation one kept his presence of mind, 
even before the scaffold. 

My grandfather did not utter a word ; 
doubtless he feared to say something which 
would be irreparable, and he wished to reflect 
before giving sentence. The troop of the faith- 
ful resumed its march toward the promised 
land of the hall for the prayer, preceded by old 
François, carrying one of the lamps. The re- 
bellious trio took its way to the desert of the 


42 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


salon , and, as I was rather learned in Bible his- 
tory, I could not help thinking of Hagar disap- 
pearing with her son in the depths of the soli- 
tary desert. 

The prayers proceeded as usual, only that 
my grandfather prolonged his self-examination 
beyond all bounds. Not at that time having 
sins enough to occupy me so long, I thought of 
my little cousin. 

“ Poor little thing ! ” I said to myself. “ How 
terrible it is to think that she must burn in hell 
forever, while all who are kneeling here, on the 
chairs or on the floor — I trust God will pardon 
even my enemy the gardener — will be enjoying 
all the happiness of paradise ! ” 

As may be seen, my theology was of the 
most primitive, and I condemned poor Rosa- 
monde simply because she was a heretic. But 
her lot in this world was less easy to de- 
cide. 

“They will never allow her,” I thought “to 
pass the night under this roof. What will be- 
come of her? On what stone, under the shel- 
ter of what tree, will she rest her head ? What 
a strange idea to be a Protestant ! ” 

I returned to the salon with the rest of the 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


43 


family, my heart oppressed, expecting some ter- 
rible sentence. Fortunately neither Hagar nor 
Ishmael, that is to say neither Uncle John, 
Rosamonde, nor her nurse, were in that desert. 
I may even say, in justice to the family, that 
they all, my grandfather at the head, seemed to 
share my satisfaction. In spite of all I have 
said, the good old man would have been horri- 
bly unhappy, I am sure, if he had been obliged 
to begin a night of St. Bartholomew of his 
own by putting his grand-niece out-of-doors. 
The other members of the family, even the 
“ ancestors,” were not more fanatical, and 
every one was careful not to make the slightest 
allusion to the drama of the evening. For my 
own part, I did not even whisper a word to a 
living being until the moment when I found 
myself alone with my old Justine. 

“ Where is she” I asked, in a low voice, as if 
our walls had not the best of reasons for being 
deaf. 

“ Poor little thing, she is already asleep. 
Madame la mère had a bed prepared for her in 
the second story of the tower, above the bar- 
on’s rooms. We all went up by the back stair- 
case to see her, but the baron was at the door, 


44 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


and would not let any one pass. He is like a 
lion defending its young.” 

I could not help wondering whether Justine 
had ever seen a lion in the exercise of its fa- 
therly duties, but the force of the comparison 
struck my imagination. All night I dreamed 
of Rosamonde. I saw her asleep under a tree, 
doubtless a palm, guarded by a monster with a 
bristling mane, but which had the eyes and 
mustache of my Uncle John. 

At the moment when I write, she still rests, 
my precious one, not far from the tower where 
she slept so well that night, and it is still Uncle 
John who guards her. 

How many joys and sorrows, tears and 
smiles, between these two sleeps ! Poor dear 
Uncle John, watch well over the orphan, until 
another takes the place to keep guard over her 
who was so loved! 


VL 


Strong governments do not permit the 
disturbances to be seen by the outside world 
which, without threatening their existence, are 
sometimes inevitable. Vigorous repressions, 
prudent concessions or reforms, all are accom- 
plished without noise or effort, and even the 
appearance of new and important personages 
only inspires healthy curiosity in the citizens. 

Thus it was at Vandelnay. I never knew, 
and never shall know what explanations were 
exchanged between Uncle John and his brother. 
Was the discussion violent, or did the sovereign 
authority yield easily? Was it necessary for 
the counselors of the crown to interfere ? The 
echoes of my grandmother’s cabinet, sleeping 
long ago, alone could tell me now, for this bou- 
doir had thick doors, and the “ ancestors ” in 
their most excited moments always used the 
calm tones of good society. All that I know is, 


- 46 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

that the next day, on the stroke of eleven, the 
baron took his place at table, holding Rosie by 
the hand, and followed by the inevitable ’Lis- 
beth. 

The pretty English diminutive Rosie, which 
was employed from that time on by my uncle 
when he spoke of his granddaughter, was 
adopted by the “ young,” that is to say, by my 
parents and myself. The servants, except the 
cook who was always on the side of the “ an- 
cestors,” did the same. 

These last, up to their latest breath, never 
called their young relative anything but Rosa- 
monde — never sparing a letter. 

In reflecting about it — and I have had only 
too much opportunity for reflection since the 
time of which I speak — I have wondered if the 
poor child would not have been happier in no 
matter what orphan asylum than she was at 
Vandelnay, at least in the early days. In this 
old manor life was dull even for me, the spoiled 
darling of the house. My grandfather and his 
sisters professed a ferocious hatred against the 
English, of which our natural antipathy to-day 
can give but a faint idea. If one adds to this 
the fact that the name alone of heretic caused 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


4 7 

their eyes to reflect the light of the funeral pile 
of Jeanne d’Arc, and, nearer our own times, the 
bloody flames kindled at Vandelnay by Ad- 
miral Coligni during the wars of religion under 
the reign of Charles IX. 

As a matter of course, my ardor was in- 
creased by my historical studies — perhaps 
slightly prejudiced— and I shared these doc- 
trines. Fortunately, my grandmother was a 
saint, incapable of hating any one, and my 
parents, although, judging more calmly because 
they belonged to a younger generation, held 
themselves aloof in a pitying neutrality. 

It is not the less true that if there was a 
spot in the world where my cousin ought not 
to have put her foot, it was Vandelnay. But 
apparently, for reasons unknown to me, my 
uncle was not free to choose a home for his 
granddaughter. It was therefore necessary 
that all should agree to live together in a way 
that strongly resembled the dwelling of prison- 
ers-of-war in an enemy’s country — a resem- 
blance made stronger by the fact that Rosie did 
not know a word of our language. 

As things went, it seemed probable that she 
might grow up without being more learned in 


4 8 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

this respect; for my uncle, who spent several 
hours of each day in teaching her, seemed to 
have a certain pride in never allowing either 
the child or her nurse to hear a word of 
French. 

As for me, I only saw her at the hours of 
meals, at least during the first days. She ate 
little, partly, I suppose, from fright, and partly 
because the cooking at Vandelnay, though irre- 
proachable, was entirely different from what 
she had been used to. But if she was not 
remarkable for her appetite, she was for her 
correct manners, which, it is not much to say, 
surpassed mine. Once I was reprimanded thus 
by my grandfather: 

“ I am sorry to say that you are not nearly 
so neat at table as your cousin.” 

The sadness of her experiences of life, which 
was already painted on this baby face, was pitiful 
to see. Very soon Rosie showed a passionate 
affection for her grandfather, very natural un- 
der the circumstances. From time to time she 
looked at him with deep tenderness — and I may 
add that my uncle returned her love with usury. 
He was at once gloomy and happy ; we hardly 
saw him, his life being passed in the apartments 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


49 


of the tower, which became an asylum for that 
branch of the family, or, if the weather per- 
mitted, in some quiet part of the park. There 
he would sit for hours watching the child as 
she played in the sand of the paths. I watched 
them, sometimes almost with envy, not daring 
to disturb their tranquillity. When the child’s 
wooden spade had gone too deep, it was touch- 
ing to see with what melancholy care Uncle 
John would repair the damage before going 
back to the château. 

“We are not at home,” he seemed to say 
in a low voice, as he bent his tall, thin person 
over his work. 

My personal sentiments for my cousin were 
for a long time those of the most profound 
disdain ; for, like most boys of my age, I con- 
sidered that girls belong to an inferior cate- 
gory of human beings. Morning and evening, 
it is true, Rosie and I kissed each other as we 
kissed every member of the family, which made 
sixteen kisses a day given and received by each 
of us, without counting the extras. 

But what a difference in the manner in 
which we accomplished this ceremony ! One 
would have said that this caress, which with 
4 


50 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


me was perfectly mechanical, was a great boon 
which I deigned to accord and which my 
cousin received with gratitude. When my lips 
were going to touch the child’s cheek, she 
would close her eyes, and seemed to wait to 
see if I would not repeat it, a natural enough 
idea, but one which only came to me later, 
when the ice was completely broken between 
us. This was how it happened. 

As a matter of course, I had my garden and 
piece of ground where I cultivated vegetables 
— not the rarest, my strained relations with 
the gardener not permitting me to ask favors 
of him, or to obtain anything better than stunt- 
ed cabbage-plants or superfluous beans. This 
is what comes — I have experienced it still more 
bitterly since then — from being in the opposi- 
tion. 

One day I was trimming my lettuce-plants, 
which seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in 
growing as tall as possible, while my peas were 
obstinate in only rising a few inches from the 
ground in spite of the inviting trellis I had 
prepared for them. Miss Rosie passed along 
the side of my domain escorted by her nurse. 
She stopped to watch me work, and regarded 


MY COUSIN \ MISS CINDERELLA . 


51 


my horticultural products with an admiration 
which flattered me more than I cared to show, 
for, with very rare exceptions, the people who 
passed by chance openly refused to look upon 
my efforts as serious. 

In spite of the entreaties of ’Lisbeth, who 
wanted her to go farther, she resisted, and 
stood watching. When I remember it to-day I 
think — with more vanity than then — that she 
was thinking more of the gardener than the 
garden. To have a companion for her soli- 
tary games, even one older than herself — was 
it not the instinctive dream of this child, of 
whom it could be said, “ She came to her 
own, and they received her very badly ” ? I 
must have seemed like a great personage in a 
comic opera, reassuring a shepherdess when I 
made her a sign that I would permit her to 
enter my inclosure — inclosure formed of a 
hedge of box six inches high. She accepted, 
blushing with pleasure, and I proudly led her 
from the forest of my raspberry-bushes to the 
prairie where my spinach was just leaving the 
ground, then to my farm, represented by a 
green box, where, behind some bars, white 
rabbits were moving their noses, and, lastly, to 


52 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


my country-house, a rustic bench, sheltered by 
a roof of reeds. My white rabbits, as one may 
suppose, were the part of all my riches which 
attracted my visitor the most. She stroked 
them with her little hand, after asking my per- 
mission with a humble look. If I had allowed 
her to go on, I think we might have been 
there still. . . . Poor dear ! Now I would 
give fields, chateau, and farms, if I could bring 
back those days! 

But then I considered that I had something 
better to do than to content the curiosity of 
a little girl, and I declared to her, by signs, 
that I must go back to my work. By signs 
the child made me understand that I would 
make her the happiest person in the world if 
I would let her work too. She had no idea 
that she had placed the yoke of slavery on her 
own neck. From that moment I had under 
my orders a docile and remarkably intelligent 
laborer of indefatigable zeal, who asked noth- 
ing from her master, not even gratitude. As 
a matter of course, I gave her the most disa- 
greeable part of the work to do, such as tak- 
ing the small stones and weeds from the beds 
and destroying the snails, who seemed to have 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


53 


come from all the country round to take ref- 
uge in my spinach. During all these hours 
of work, my subordinate never once revolted 
against my rather tyrannical authority. As she 
worked she tried to talk with me, and I flatter 
myself that I was her first, if not her best pro- 
fessor in our language. Once more I proved in 
this connection the truth of the saying, that a 
good deed is never lost. My enemy the gar- 
dener, witness of my friendly intentions with 
my little cousin, and possibly mistaking my mo- 
tives, became suddenly devoted to me. From 
that time he gave me some of his best plants 
and rarest seeds. More remarkable still, when 
later I made marauding expeditions among his 
forcing-houses, I had the satisfaction of seeing 
my former enemy turn his back, as if he were 
resolved to let me have full liberty, 

This gardener was a strange being, with all 
kinds of learning. What was my astonishment 
one day, to hear him speaking English with 
’Lisbeth ! Nearly every day as she worked at 
her knitting, or watched over “ Miss Rosie,” 
as the servants called her, the gardener chanced 
to pass by. Certainly, ’Lisbeth did not seem 
a very attractive person. However, he fell in 


54 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


love with her, without saying a word to any 
one, even to the person most interested. He 
ended by marrying her when they were both 
pretty well advanced in years. 

Outside of serious occupations — that is to 
say, in my garden, during the repasts, and the 
few minutes when we were together in the sa- 
lon — I began to treat my cousin rather more 
graciously, though I still maintained with her 
the airs of a superior to an inferior being. On 
the very rare occasions when she ventured to 
pronounce some words of French, I laughed at 
her mistakes with the haughty commiseration 
of a chancellor of the Academy, when in my 
quality of teacher I should have excused them. 

Poor child ! If ever a being was preserved 
by early education from vanity, it was she. If 
she did anything wrong very much was made 
of it and she was severely reproved, while her 
good qualities and actions were accepted as a 
matter of course. As soon as she understood 
a few words of French, my grandmother told 
her so often how ugly she was, that I came to 
regard her as a sort of monster disinherited by 
Nature. English, poor, ugly, and a Protestant ! 
What an accumulation of misfortunes On a sin- 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA • 


55 


gle human being ! I needed all the precepts ot 
Christian charity that I learned each day in 
the “De Viris” to give me the courage to be 
kind to her — except when we were among the 
snails. 

But it seemed that she was born with that 
most useful gift, of being contènt with little. 
If I only looked at her from one end of the 
table to the other with something resembling 
a smile, if I allowed her to put her head near 
enough to mine as we sat in my favorite corner 
of the salon to admire the wonderful pictures 
of my book, I was repaid by one of the long, 
loving looks which she reserved exclusively for 
two beings in the world — my Uncle John and 
me. I spoke of human beings, for my white 
rabbits, which I allowed her to take care of — 
of course under my orders — shared the love of 
their little protectress. 

One day, when a numerous family of little 
ones had appeared, to her great astonishment 
— and even to mine, for we were very ignorant 
— this poor little child, who had no mother to 
caress her, nearly fainted with joy. 


VIL 

It was inevitable that so much sweetness 
and gentleness should produce their natural 
effect in natures which were really good, as 
were the members of the family — even the “ an- 
cestors.” Little by little every one began to 
love the child who made no noise, occupied 
so small a place, and demanded so little. It 
was easy to perceive that all the Vandelnays in 
the world, even the youngest, loved Rosie when 
no one saw them, and appeared to ignore her ex- 
istence as soon as a human form appeared at the 
end of the corridor. Hardly a day passed when 
my little cousin did not appear at table with a 
bit of ribbon or some jet which friendly hands 
had added to her very plain morning-dress. 
One evening when she was in the salon while 
her nurse was at dinner, she most imprudently 
came to offer me bonbons from a bag bearing 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 5 7 

the name of the fashionable shop in Poitiers, 
which seemed to make my father very uneasy, 
as he was the only member of the family who 
had been in town that day. But it seemed as if 
every one had agreed to see nothing, and I hur- 
ried the offending object back into the pocket 
from which it ought not to have been taken. 

Some days after Rosie appeared pressing 
to her breast a perfectly new and exceedingly 
small doll. The following week the doll was 
six inches longer, and before the end of the 
month it was almost as big as Rosie herself, 
and its clothes were certainly much finer. 

The dolls were treated as the bonbons had 
been ; no one seemed to know where they came 
from. My cousin might, I am sure, have gone 
about the chateau with the Colossus of Rhodes 
in her arms without any question being asked. 
She continued to be nearly as silent as at first ; 
only when we were in the garden she began to 
chatter as well as she could in French, in spite 
of my ridicule. 

Evidently there were things against her of 
which I was ignorant. One I deeply deplored, 
which, so far as I could make out, was one of- 
the least. Every evening at the hour of prayer, 


58 MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 

and every Sunday when we went to mass, and 
the place of the young heretic was empty, there 
was a frown on every brow. Could this wound 
never be closed? This thought, in spite of my 
youth, made me very anxious. Toward the end 
of the spring which followed the arrival of my 
cousin at Vandelnay, the minds of the family 
were preoccupied by a single subject — my con- 
firmation and first communion, which were ap- 
proaching. I had come to the time for medita- 
tion and penitence. My garden was abandoned, 
and I hardly ever saw my cousin. Did they 
fear that my religious faith would be tampered 
with ? What would have happened if, like a 
new Polyeucte, I had declared before the holy 
altar : 

“I am a Protestant ! ” 

The thing did not seem to me probable, 
for I felt ready to die for my faith. But who 
can tell what wiles the enemy of mankind may 
try ? 

I must confess that the excellent curé who 
directed my conscience and gave me instruc- 
tion, seemed to have the most liberal ideas on 
all these subjects. More than once we touched 
on the fatal subject, for the nearer I came to 


MY COUSIN ,, ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


59 

heaven the greater was my distress to think 
that my poor cousin was in such danger. 

“ Do not be uneasy,” the good priest said. 
“ God is good, and will show his goodness to 
us. Pray for your cousin, and leave the rest 
to Heaven.” 

Partly reassured by these words, I prayed 
earnestly to God that he would open the eyes 
of the poor child ; also, that she might be al- 
lowed to be present at the ceremony. 

Thus it was a great joy to me to learn that 
on that day Rosie would go to mass. 

Before going to the little chapel, which was 
decorated as it had not been since my father’s 
wedding, all the family assembled in the salon . 
Then I entered, and struggling against a real 
emotion, such as I have never felt in my life 
since then, I asked their pardon for the faults 
of which I might have been guilty, as I asked 
God also to forgive me. 

As a matter of course, they did not show 
themselves less pitiful than the Creator. 

My grandfather blessed me solemnly ; every- 
body wept. My cousin looked at me with her 
big black eyes full of astonishment, mixed with 
a strange expression which I could not define. 


6o 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


For the first time since her arrival at Vandel- 
na y — probably for the first time in her life — 
she witnessed the pomp of our worship. No 
one can convince me that the sermon was not 
preached expressly for her: 

“ Suffer little children to come unto me.” 

When the mass was ended, the communi- 
cants walked in procession, the bells ringing, 
and the organ playing. 

As a matter of course, all the village had 
its eyes fixed on “ M. Gaston,” and I regret 
to add, that I have never since that day been 
so worthy of general esteem and attention. I 
looked for my little cousin in the crowd of my 
relatives of every degree of nearness. At last 
I discovered her in a remote corner, looking 
at me with a sort of mystic respect. Her 
generally calm face expressed the greatest en- 
thusiasm. I signed to her, she approached 
gently, and as if she considered herself un- 
worthy of a more intimate caress, took my 
hand, and pressed it against her heart. 

In the evening, at the hour of family wor- 
ship, most unexpectedly Rosie did something, 
which all her relatives were pleased to attrib- 
ute to my powerful intercession. Once more 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 6 1 


she took my hand, and silently we followed 
the pious assembly. From that day she always 
prayed with us. I will anticipate events to say 
that four years after she was baptized and re- 
ceived the communion. I had the honor of 
being her godfather, her conversion being at- 
tributed in a great measure to me. If later 
in life I influenced the feminine mind in a less 
profitable fashion, I hope I shall be pardoned 
in consideration of this my first conversion. 

For several months after my first commun- 
ion things went on in their usual way at Van- 
delnay, but with a sensible amelioration in the 
lot of my cousin. She was treated with kind- 
ness, but always with a certain reserve, as if, 
in spite of everything, some cloud hung over 
her. Then the time came when I must leave 
home to go to college, and for weeks before 
the thought of this event seemed to cover the 
chateau with a pall, for all its inhabitants, 
masters or servants, had, I believe, the weak- 
ness to be fond of me. 

I told the great news to my cousin. One 
day, in the beginning of September, when we 
were working in my garden, the sudden thought 
of how useless it all was came over me. 


62 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

“ My poor Rosie,” I sighed, “ when the 
chrysanthemums which we are planting are in 
flower, I shall not be here to see them.” 

At first she did not understand. As her 
habit was, she made me repeat my phrase, for 
she no more allowed one of my words to fall to 
the ground, than if they were golden. When 
I had carefully explained to her what college 
was, and how this fatal invention would sepa- 
rate us for months, the face of my companion 
seemed to assume the rigidity of marble, which, 
to speak the truth, was its usual appearance, 
when we were not together. She reflected 
deeply fora moment: 

“ That is the reason why they have been 
sad for several days ! ” 

“ Does it seem to you that they are sad ?” I 
replied, flattered by the importance which she 
ascribed to me. 

“Oh! certainly, Gastie,” she replied, with 
emphasis. “Yesterday I saw my aunt crying. 
What a pity I can not go to college in your 
place. Then nobody would cry.” 

This reply seemed so absurd to me that I 
burst out laughing, which proves that a man 
does not always understand things as they 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 63 

ought to be understood, and the manner in 
which they fail to read a woman’s heart, even 
the heart of a little woman seven years old. 

From this day my garden continued to re- 
ceive our visits, but the instruments of culture 
were allowed to rust, for we passed our time in 
pitying me. I had made the discovery that the 
part of victim has great compensations. I gen- 
erously allowed Rosie to weep over me, with- 
out thinking whether she did not sometimes 
feel like weeping over herself, so persuaded was 
I that we did not belong to the same category 
of human beings. 

I will cut short the recital of those last days. 

When the time had Come to say good-by, I 
am ashamed to state that I gave proof of weak- 
ness unworthy of my sex; I was absolutely dis- 
solved in tears ! As for my cousin, I saw very 
little of her during the last hours ; I could not 
perceive that she shed tears, perhaps consider- 
ing herself too far removed from the family to 
allow herself this luxury. 

But my mother’s first letter contained this 
postscript : 

“ I forgot to tell you that your cousin took 


64 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

to her bëd the day after you left. The doctor 
can not discover that there is anything in par- 
ticular the matter, but ascribes it to the fact 
that she is growing fast. My precious child, 
be sure to take good care of yourself.” 


VIII. 


I TOOK the best care I could of myself, and 
my health supported triumphantly the trials 
through which I passed. 

To speak frankly, I had not been twelve 
hours at college without discovering that the 
discipline was much less severe than at Vandel- 
nay, and that there were far greater enjoyments 
there. But with a polite affection for the fam- 
ily, I took care not to speak of this agreeable 
surprise, and I had the tact to allow them to 
believe that the wounds in my heart would be 
long in healing. 

“ Try not to think too much about us,” wrote 
my mother. “You will do yourself harm, my 
dear Gastie ! ” 

Alas ! she would have been quickly reas- 
sured if she could have seen her dear Gastie 
first at all the games, and filling the quadrangle 
with his joyous cries — triumphant in all the bat- 
5 


66 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


ties. Very soon her tender heart knew another 
fear. Thanks to the good curé at Vandelnay, I 
was, without any one’s suspecting it, very well 
up in all the subjects which composed the lim- 
ited programme of my class. The first compo- 
sitions proved me to be destined to great suc- 
cesses. 

“We are very proud of your triumphs, she 
wrote, “ but do not work too hard.” 

It is the only one, I fear, of my mother’s 
counsels that I have never neglected. 

At the Easter vacation I arrived at Vandel- 
nay in perfect health, and laden with prizes 
and testimonials. I understood by the way in 
which my grandfather embraced me that the 
time was past when I had neither the right to 
accept a second glass of wine nor to refuse the 
spinach. I felt that I was some one, especially 
as I considered that my uniform, in which I ap- 
peared for the first time, enhanced the dignity 
of my appearance. For a whole hour the as- 
sembled family examined, weighed, and meas- 
ured me, as if I had been around the world. 

The areopagus decided, contradictorily, that 
l resembled my ancestor the admiral, who was 
dark with features as sharp as a knife, my great- 


MY CG U SI N, MISS CINDERELLA. 67 

great uncle who had a flat nose, and a relative 
still living, thank God ! who passed, I have 
more than once been told, for one of the hand- 
somest blondes of the court of Charles X. 

In the midst of these agreeable discussions 
the dinner-hour arrived. As we were going 
into the dining-room, a small person whom I 
did not at first recognize — she had grown so 
much — approached me, more timidly I would 
wager than the relative just named approached 
the last legitimate king. 

“ Oh, Rosie ! ” I exclaimed, with the affabil- 
ity of a gracious prince. “You are still here.” 

By the glance that my uncle John threw 
me, I suspected that the remark was not a happy 
one, but in the general agitation no one but he 
seemed to have observed it. I tried to make 
up for it by kissing my cousin, who did not 
raise her eyes, and giving her my hand to lead 
her to the table. 

The next day, in the course of conversation, 
I heard that she worked very hard — something 
like twelve hours a day — for all the feminine in- 
habitants of Vandelnay had clubbed together, 
so to speak, to push on her education. 

My grandmother taught her sewing, my 


68 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

Aunt Frederick grammar and spelling, my Aunt 
Alexandrine drawing and music, my mother 
writing, arithmetic, and sacred history. I shud- 
dered simply to think of so much work. 

She managed, I do not know how, to be at 
my garden when I passed there to take a look 
at my possessions. Even in the time of my 
greatest horticultural ardor my beds had never 
been in such splendid order. With anxious 
eyes, the child watched my face. 

“ Oh ! oh ! ” I exclaimed, condescendingly, 
“you have replaced me very well, Rosie.” 

“Does it please you?” she stammered. 

“ Yes, certainly.” 

And without further praise, I went on to the 
little lake, where the swans who saw me coming 
approached the shore to take their food from my 
hand. 

At the long vacation, in the month of Au- 
gust, I passed by these again, but Rosie was not 
waiting to beg for my approbation. The gar- 
den had run to seed, and was overgrown with 
weeds. She, too, had said to herself, What does 
it matter? 

“ The lazy little thing ! ” I thought, “ I must 
scold her.” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 69 

But a pony which I found in the stable — 1 
had carried off all the prizes of my class — took 
from me both the time and the desire to scold 
any one, above all, so insignificant a person as 
Rosie. During the two months, full of pleasures 
of all kinds, which slipped away like a dream, I 
saw her very little. 

Years passed. After the pony, came a gun, 
and I only thought of shooting and hunting. 

Then Death came to the chateau, and when 
he had learned the way to the house, full of old 
people, he came back often as if the easy work 
pleased him ! One after another the “ ancestors ” 
departed to sleep in the vault under our chapel. 
Then my Uncle John, the only one of his gener- 
ation who was left, quitted Vandelnay with his 
granddaughter, heiress to a few thousand francs 
left her by Aunt Frederick. The other, Aunt 
Alexandrine, holding to the old custom, had 
made her will in my favor. 

My parents were left masters of the place, 
and God knows with what pleasure they would 
have kept my Uncle John and his granddaugh- 
ter under their roof. They begged him to re- 
tain his apartment in the old tower, but he 
would not hear of it. 


70 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


“ When my brother and sisters were alive,” 
he said, “ I could stay too. An old man more 
or less does not count. But time has gone on. 
I must give way to the younger generation. 
Besides, it will do Rosamond good to pass some 
time in Paris.” 

And he would not yield. 

One fine day, he and Rosie went away from 
Vandelnay followed by ’Lisbeth. At this time 
I was studying law in Paris, and had no chance 
to say good-by to the youngest branch of my 
family. 

When she wrote me about their departure, 
my mother sent me their address in a far-away 
quarter, somewhere behind the Luxembourg. 

“You will often go to see them, I hope. I 
should like to be sure that they will be happy, 
but I doubt it, not only because they are poor, 
but because they will be so lonely in that great 
city without a friend. God knows that your 
father and I have done our best to prevent their 
departure, which makes us very sad. But you 
know your uncle. . . .” 

When I read this letter, I resolved to go to 
see my uncle and cousin within three days, 
which would have been simple enough if I had 


MY COUSIN . ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


7 1 


lived in their quarter. But I belonged to the 
category of students who were fashionable, and 
lived near the Madeleine in charming entresols , 
dining out every evening, and going to the 
University, when their social duties permitted, 
in perfectly appointed tilburies. I even believe 
that I went once or twice on horseback before 
taking my ride in the “ Bois.” I do not wish to 
pretend to be better than I am, but I affirm that 
when I woke up one morning, I said to myself : 

“ No matter if it blows or hails to-day, I will 
go to see my uncle and cousin.” 

Unfortunately, I could not find the address 
my mother had sent me. It seems simple to 
have asked for it, but I belonged to the class of 
beings ready to do anything for their families 
and friends but one — to write a letter. 

It was certainly a great fault, and I frankly 
recognize it myself. But it must have been 
atoned for by other qualities, for every one 
about me was my friend. 

When I reflect a little, I presume that the 
first of these qualities was my father’s fortune, 
for he being kept at Vandelnay by ill-health, 
allowed me the benefit of all he possessed, with 
a generosity which with him was a system. 


7 2 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


I had, besides, the gift of being amusing, 
which caused me to be sought after, though 
amusing people were less rare then than now, 
as all my contemporaries could testify. 

I think I can also call the same testimony 
to bear witness that I was good-looking, a good 
dancer, a good horseman, neither too ignorant 
of the world nor too blasé for my age, disliking 
intensely all that was physically or morally ugly 
or unseemly. 

As a characteristic trait, I may add that my 
manners were as severe as those of a monk, or 
stranger still, of a galley-slave. My horse, my 
friends, my studies — the latter rather neglected 
— my new duties as an accomplished man of the 
world, which I took seriously, kept me fully oc- 
cupied, and left me no time to think of evil, and 
were enough to have tired the muscles of an 
athlete. 

To sum up, with or without my will, I was 
irreproachable, and if I could only have found 
time to go to see my Uncle John and cousin, I 
did not see what I should have lacked of abso- 
lute perfection. 

At the balls, I saw mothers who marked my 
head of twenty-three years with the seal of the 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


73 

chosen, while in the secret of their hearts they 
thought : 

“We must keep track of that young man; 
after a season or two, he will be an unexception- 
able match, if he does not come to grief.” 

Ah ! if young men knew why mothers go to 
balls, why at the risk of numberless fatigues 
they take their daughters there ! If they knew 
why the daughters smile, talk, and go to supper! 
If they knew ! But after all, to judge from their 
enthusiasm of to-day, I suspect that they do 
know. Are they ignorant of anything? And 
how tiresome and disappointing and sad it is 
— to know ! 


IX. 


At the end of my first year of law studies, 
I passed a pretty good examination. It would 
be bad taste on my part to blame the simplicity 
of the studies or the indulgence of the exam- 
iners ; certainly, since the first success in my 
intellectual career, I have never heard that a 
young man had failed to pass without pitying 
him profoundly. 

I expected to return to Vandelnay for the 
vacation, but before going, I felt it as an imper- 
ative duty to go to see my Uncle John and his 
granddaughter. Fortunately, my fashionable 
friends of both sexes were dispersed in all direc- 
tions ; I had nothing to do just then but to show 
myself an affectionate relative. 

But the difficulty, a real one, was to discover 
the address of the Baron de Vandelnay. Should 
I ask my mother for it I should have to confess 




MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


75 


myself guilty of culpable negligence. Fortu- 
nately, the family notary, to whom I never failed 
to pay a visit on the first of each month, must 
possess the knowledge. And from him I 
learned that the old man lived in the Rue 
d’Assas. I took a cab, as well to spare him the 
sight of my equipage, as to save “ Hannibal,” 
whose feet were tender as a woman’s, from the 
heated pavements of the left bank of the Seine, 
which were burning under the July sun. 

When I learned from the concierge that the 
baron was at home, and alone — the fourth floor, 
and what a staircase — I felt as much emotion as 
I had experienced ten days ago before my ex- 
aminers. As I went up I said to myself that it 
was easy enough to find well-sounding phrases 
in which to speak of the condition of freed- 
men or of the rights of minors. But what 
could I reply if the formidable question was 
put: 

“ Why did you not come to see us sooner?” 

It seemed that Uncle John had not suffered 
much from the privation of my visits, for he 
received me as if we had parted the night be- 
fore, with the gentle kindness and the smile of 
resignation which I had seen on his face ever 


y 6 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

since the night when he came back to Vandel- 
nay, bringing Rosie wrapped in her shawls. 

Poor uncle ! he had advanced another stage 
in the journey of life. It was easy to see that 
the next halt would be the last. His white hair 
was very long ; his figure was bent ; his clothes, 
although scrupulously neat, betrayed poverty. 

I even recognized with sorrow that they were 
the same he had worn at Vandelnay. 

I hastened to speak of my cousin. 

“ She is at her painting,’’ said my uncle. 
“ Ah, it is true you do not know ! She has 
been taken with a passion for painting. It is 
fair to say that she has some talent. But you 
can see for yourself.” 

On the walls hung four or five pictures, 
whose merits I should have had difficulty in 
making out — first, because 1 knew nothing 
about painting, and secondly, because my eyes 
were suddenly blurred. These pictures were 
views of Vandelnay, the park and the sur- 
roundings, probably from memory. On a small 
easel on the table, in a velvet frame, was a pict- 
ure which brought emotion to the climax. It 
was a view of my garden as it had been eleven 
years before. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 77 

Uncle John turned his back upon me quickly, 
and began to look out of the window at the sky. 

“You are going back there,” he said, after 
a moment’s silence ; “ I know that you have 
passed your examination, and I congratulate 
you.” 

“You know?” I stammered. “How did 
you learn it?” 

“Your cousin told me, I believe. The child 
is a walking gazette, and tells me all that hap- 
pens in Paris ; the good things, of course. I 
rarely go out. My legs — ” 

He finished what he wanted to express by 
a grimace common to him when he wanted 
to escape a judgment in words on persons or 
things. 

“Does my cousin go out much?” I asked. 

If I had expressed my whole thought, I 
would have added : 

“ She would do better to paint less, and not 
to leave her old grandfather alone.” 

My uncle replied, not seeming in the least 
displeased with her: 

“ Thank God, ’Lisbeth is still with us, and 
she is an irreproachable chaperon. Poor Rosie, 
she will be sorry to have missed her cousin ! ” 


73 


my COUSIN , MISS CINDERELLA. 


“ She can console herself, for I shall come 
back.” 

“ Before the vacation ? When do you leave ? ” 

“ To-morrow morning.” 

My uncle smiled a smile in which there was 
a whole chapter of philosophy. 

The conversation was difficult. On my side, 
I reflected that it is difficult to find anything to 
say to people whom one sees once a year, while 
in a daily intimacy an hour seems short. My 
uncle reflected also. Suddenly he turned to 
me with one of those tender looks which I had 
never seen before Rosa’s infancy. 

“ Listen,” he said ; “ you may tell them that 
I love them with my whole heart ; and words 
like these, you must know, are not often on 
my lips. That is my message to the living, 
who are only two, your father and mother. 
As for the dead, who are much more numer- 
ous, you must tell them ” — his look had changed 
— “that I forgive them. Thus there will be no 
embarrassment when I go among them.” 

His handsome face was lighted with an ex- 
pression of mocking defiance to Death, who 
would — soon, probably — unite him with the 
“ancestors.” He added : 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


79 

“ The interview will be cold enough, at 
best ! ” 

These words brought to mind my questions 
which I had not dared to ask him ten or twelve 
years before, and which later, among all my oc- 
cupations, had passed from my mind. I asked 
the old man — speaking instinctively as I did 
when a child: “Uncle John, I know no more 
about your life than if you were a stranger. Do 
you not think I ought to know a little some- 
thing?” 

“You have suddenly become very curious!” 

In speaking thus the baron tried to appear 
ironical. But I saw at once that my question, 
for some reason, pleased him. 

“ After all,” he added, “ it is your right. 
Each one of our lives, good or bad, useful or 
otherwise, belongs to our family, and from 
henceforth the care of the good old name will 
be in your hands. I hope, my dear boy, that it 
may bring you more happiness than it has to 
me and mine.” 

His face, which had been sad for a moment, 
became very serious. To my intense astonish- 
ment, the old man bowed low before me, with a 
kind of respect. 


3o MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


“Future Marquis of Vandelnay,” said he, 
“this is the confession of one of your family 
Avho was severely judged by his own genera- 
tion. You will perhaps be more indulgent.” 

“Was my uncle laughing at me?” I askred 
myself — and I am not sure yet. What I was 
sure of, was that I was disgusted with my curi- 
osity, foreseeing more than one embarrassing 
comparison in the confession he announced. 
I give it, a little condensed, though the baron 
was not a man to expatiate uselessly on his own 
history. 


X. 


At the time of the revolution, the chateau of 
Vandelnay, was inhabited by the same persons 
I found there fifty years later. As a matter of 
course, I refer to the “ancestors.” Balthazar 
de Vandelnay, the last marquis of the old 
“ régime ,” died just in time for my grandfather 
to profit — one of the last of the French noblesse 
to do so — by that crumbling institution, “the 
right eldest son.” He inherited the château, 
lands, and the whole fortune, and although he 
was only just twenty-five years old, assumed the 
responsibility of the head of the family, and was 
as grave, as implicitly obeyed by his brother 
and two sisters, as if he had also inherited the 
dignity of old age. 

The necessity of taking care of his two 
young sisters, my aunts Frederick and Alexan- 
drine, and, perhaps also, a wise foresight, hin- 
6 


82 MY COUSIN ; ÆT/55 CINDERELLA. 


dered him from emigrating, and the tempest 
passed harmlessly by these three aristocrats, 
which had cost the heads of so many who were 
older. But to provide that the family should 
not be obliterated in case of misfortune to him- 
self, he confided my Uncle John to the care of 
one of his friends who was going to England. 
It was fated that this young emigrant of twelve 
years old should only return to his native land 
thirty-five years later, that is to say, near the 
end of the reign of Charles X. I omit all the 
first part of his story, not that it was less inter- 
esting, but that it was less directly connected 
with my own. 

After studying in England, he went to India 
with an officer’s commission; but Jean de Van- 
delnay’s temper was as uncertain as his courage 
was brilliant, and a quarrel with his superior 
officers led him to throw up a position which 
would have led to fortune. Having become 
free, he started for France. 

But his wanderings led him to Italy, through 
which he traveled leisurely, little counting on 
the fate that was in store for him. 

A sudden passion for painting — which was 
the revelation of a new world — seized him, and 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 83 

he haunted the galleries and the best studios. 
In one of these latter, which was a rendezvous 
for strangers of distinction passing through 
Florence, was a masterpiece, before which the 
works of the best painters paled ; for this 
masterpiece was living. 

Laura Scarpi, the rose of Tuscany, as all 
Florence called her, conquered the heart of my 
uncle by her first glance. She was the daughter 
of a painter richer in glory than in money. As 
for her mother — of her my Uncle John did 
not tell me a single word. 

God knows why mystery remains forever 
hidden under this silence. As a matter of 
course, the most perfect frankness was due — 
from the Baron de Vandelnay, become the ac- 
cepted suitor of Mademoiselle Scarpi — to the 
head of his family. One thing is certain. The 
traveler was informed that the doors of the pa- 
ternal mansion would be open for him alone. 
This was not the way to change the resolution 
of a man of his temper. As he said himself : 

“ I could more easily have gone back to Van- 
delnay without my head, than without my wife, 
to whom I had plighted my faith.” 

The marriage took place, a marriage, as my 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


84 

uncle said, “followed by twenty years of exile, 
poverty, and happiness.” He told me nothing 
of this period of his life, and I remember that 
his cold reserve was both a disappointment and 
a wonder to my youthful curiosity. I did not 
understand then that there are some blessings 
that one enjoys, so to speak, on one’s knees si- 
lently, so long as they last, and which one shuts 
up more mysteriously still in one’s heart when 
they are lost. 

These twenty peaceful years of blue sky 
ended suddenly in a night of storm. Death 
took from my uncle her who was the great part 
of his life ; but on the closed tomb flourished 
a dazzling rose. Laura Scarpi left a daughter 
eighteen years old — she who was Rosie’s 
mother. 

Poor Uncle John! when he was forced to 
speak of his lost happiness, the words seemed 
to come with an effort from his nearly closed 
lips, and when he came to the remembrances of 
his days of trial, it was worse still, so that I had 
to guess the things which he did not say. 

He allowed me thus to divine the other 
catastrophe of his life. A young Englishman, 
the younger son of a noble family, came to 


MY COUSIN , MISS CINDERELLA. 85 

Florence, and was struck by the daughter, as 
the Baron de Vandelnay had been by the 
mother. The baron had never been amiable, 
but his misfortunes had still further soured his 
temper. Disliking certain attentions which he 
chose to consider compromising, devoured by 
jealousy such as is sometimes seen in fathers, 
believing, to speak plainly, in an attempted se- 
duction, the brilliant Frenchman made a scene. 
Mr. George Melvil could not, or would not 
give explanations ; besides, this was the time 
when the hatred between the two nations was 
the most violent. A meeting took place, of 
which my uncle always carried the mark. At 
length I learned why he had fought and how 
he had been wounded. 

“ We must be just,” added my uncle ; “ I lost 
patience too soon with that fool of a George ; 
and when I recovered from a long fainting-fit, 
and found myself in bed, I do not know which 
was in the deepest sorrow, he or my poor 
daughter.” 

It was written that the Vandelnays of that 
generation should all die over eighty, so my 
Uncle John’s wound healed, and as his suffer- 
ings had made him more patient, he listened 


86 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

to explanations that completely satisfied him. 
Love had made George Melvil unreasonable, 
but he had never failed in respect for her who 
was the object of it. She, on her part, hardly 
suspected the evil her eyes had wrought. 

Seeing his daughter so calm, Uncle John 
took courage, and thought the extent of the 
damage was the wound in his head. He did 
not count on the perfidious surprises of 
love. 

My cousin, in her turn, fell violently in love 
with the young man who had nearly made her 
an orphan, and, as soon as the wounded man 
could dispense with his doctors, he heard an- 
other side of the story. To give his daughter 
to an Englishman, a Protestant, a younger son, 
without fortune! Death, rather! for, in spite of 
the poor opinion which his relatives had of 
him, he had remained in heart and mind as 
much of a Vandelnay as a Vandelnay can 
be. George received the most decided re- 
fusal. 

As for my cousin, she threw herself at her 
father’s feet, but he was inexorable. 

“You must choose between this stranger 
and me,” he said to his daughter. “ If you 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 87 

decide for him, I swear that you shall never 
see my face again in this world.” 

My beautiful relative had in her veins a 
mixture of Florentine blood with that of the 
Vandelnays. She decided for the stranger. 
Perhaps she hoped that her father’s tenderness 
would prevent his keeping his oath. Poor, un- 
fortunate child ! She knew very little of her 
father’s real nature! Never, alas! was an in- 
human oath more strictly kept. 

The young couple went to England, and 
my Uncle John, left alone in the world, came 
to knock at the doors of Vandelnay, which 
there was now no reason for closing upon the 
prodigal of fifty. Though the old man was 
most discreet in what he said, I perceived that 
neither his brother nor his sisters took even 
the smallest fatted calf from the pastures of 
Vandelnay with which to rejoice over his re- 
turn. They agreed to let the past sleep, and 
that was all. Besides, my old remembrances 
were still vivid. I remembered my Uncle John, 
silent, reserved, almost isolated in the midst of 
his family. It was evident that the austere 
pride of the Vandelnays had never pardoned his 
two crimes — his own marriage and the union of 


88 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

his daughter with an English heretic, though 
certainly the last ought not to have been im- 
puted to him. 

But he had other troubles. First, he learned 
that George Melvil had not been received much 
better in England than he had been in France. 

He was reproached with having married a 
stranger without fortune, a Catholic, the 
daughter of a mother of low birth. Besides, 
his marriage put an end to the project of an 
advantageous union which his father, Lord 
Melvil, had for a long time cherished. 

The young people lived in retirement, as 
poor and as happy as Uncle John had been in 
his little house in Florence. Then Death was 
again at work ; but, at least, he did not sepa- 
rate those who loved each other. George and 
his wife, young as they were, were carried 
to the tomb with an interval of only a few 
weeks between their deaths, leaving Rosie to 
the care of her maternal grandfather. What 
was left for the old man to do but to pardon 
his daughter, and to bring his grandchild back 
to Vandelnay? 

“And I did so,” said my Uncle John when 
he had finished his story. “You were there, 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


89 

you saw it all. Truly, as well as figuratively, 
you opened the doors of Vandelnay to your 
cousin.” 

“ Which have never been closed ! ” I ex- 
claimed, with a movement of sincere affection. 
“Uncle John, why will you not come home 
with Rosie and pass the vacation at Vandelnay? 
My parents would be so happy ! And my 
cousin, too, I am sure.” 

A light shone in my uncle’s eyes, so that I 
expected to hear him accept at once. Then 
suddenly — for the old man’s fine loyal counte- 
nance was as transparent as a child’s — an expres- 
sion of embarrassment, almost of fear, succeeded 
the joy. Uncle John cast down his eyes. It 
seemed as if I had intimidated him. I thought 
I saw what the matter was, and, as I was still 
vibrating with the enthusiasm caused by the 
romantic story I had just heard, I called all my 
diplomacy to my aid, saying, in a gay tone : 

“ Uncle, I see where the shoe pinches. I will 
wager that you have committed some of the fol- 
lies of youth, and that you have forestalled 
your allowance. Why should we not reverse 
the order of things. Uncles always find some 
louis to lend to frivolous nephews — 


9 ° 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


“You are a fine fellow!” interrupted my 
uncle, extending his hand to me. “ I give you 
my word that I would accept what you offer, if 
I needed it, if it were only to give a lesson to the 
nephews of the future, to show them how uncles 
pay what they borrow. But it is not the 
question of money that stops me. One or two 
business matters, which can not be put off, will 
keep me here perhaps a week or two longer.” 

“ That does not matter ; when your affairs 
are ended, you can start. When I get to Van- 
delnay, I shall make my report to my parents, 
and, in spite of yourself, you will be forced to 
pay us a visit. Otherwise, we will come, all 
three, to get you.” 

“Very well,” said my uncle, “we shall see; 
I do not say no. In the mean time, give them 
all my love.” 

The hour was come to take leave, which was 
easy enough, as he did not try to keep me. My 
uncle evidently did not care that I should meet 
my cousin. He accompanied me to the stairs, 
through a forest of green plants, flowers, and 
birds. 

“To judge from what I see, your grand- 
daughter has kept her love for the country.” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


9 1 

Uncle John lifted his eyebrows with a comi- 
cal gesture of despair. 

“ This is nothing,” he grumbled ; “ Rosie has 
goldfish in her bedroom, and in a corner of the 
garret, ’Lisbeth, in her spare moments, is bring- 
ing up a family of white rabbits. They must 
like it ! ” 

“Perhaps they are rabbits from Vandel- 
nay ?” I asked, remembering Rosie’s admiration 
for my former pets. 

“ It is possible,” said my uncle, with an air of 
inattention. 

We said good-by, promising to meet soon; 
phrases which are short and mean little. 

On the evening of the second day after, I 
arrived at Vandelnay, worn out by the fatigue 
of the tiresome journey, for I would not leave 
“ Hannibal,” whose nerves were tired by the 
railroad travel, and whom I wished to exhibit in 
good condition to the Poitran in general and 
to my father in particular. 


XL 


The chateau was full of people. 

“We did not wish you to find it stupid at 
home,” said my father, as he went with me to 
my room, where I made a hasty toilet before 
dinner. 

He enumerated our guests, speaking with so 
much enthusiasm and pleasure, that I suspected 
— between ourselves — that my excellent father 
in doing so much to amuse me, had thought a 
little of himself. 

An hour after, my suspicions were far from 
being lessened, and certainly I did not condemn 
a need of amusement in a man whose first 
and second youth had been those of an ancho- 
rite, as I had been able to judge with my own 
eyes. 

Ah! how Vandelnay had changed since the 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA . 


93 

“ ancestors ” had gone to take their places 
under the armoried slabs of the chapel! 

Of all the living beings I had known there, 
only four remained ; my father, my mother, my- 
self, and the gardener. The latter had become a 
personage, dressing like a gentleman, and com- 
manding an army of workmen, who cultivated 
the flowers and vegetables and did the rough 
work. The old inclosures had ceased to exist. 
It was changed into a vast undulating park, 
broken by little lakes, and plantations of flower- 
ing shrubs which concealed the kitchen-garden, 
as a lowborn father-in-law conceals himself in 
the salon of his daughter become a duchess. 
Splendid green-houses and model stables had 
risen from the ground. 

Correct and perfectly trained servants went 
silently about the corridors. If family prayers 
had been mentioned to them, I will wager that 
we should have figured in a scathing article in 
the “ Siècle.” 

As for the guests, they were the cream of 
the country ; cream frothed each year by a 
short sojourn in Paris. Tiresome, old-fash- 
ioned people, chatelaines with stuff dresses and 
bunches of keys, were not of this company ; nei- 


94 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


ther were there marriageable young girls, for, 
according to my father’s ideas, I was not a 
victim to be hurried to the altar. 

But if young girls were lacking, young 
married women certainly were not. When I 
reached the salon , I had the pleasure of count- 
ing three who were remarkably beautiful, and 
before we had arrived at the dessert, one by 
whose side I was placed did me the honor to 
make me understand that she accepted my at- 
tentions seriously. In the course of the even- 
ing, which was enlivened by a little waltzing, 
the other two gave me positive evidence of 
equally amiable dispositions. 

To be taken seriously! What flattery for a 
young man of twenty-three could equal this, 
especially accustomed as I was to the distrust 
of the fashionable world of Paris, where a man 
is worthless without respectable years ! 

Ah ! what a charming evening, passed with 
my mother smiling on me, happy to see me 
again, and those other smiles — less maternal ! 
For the first time life, youth, and hope spoke 
clearly to me of all sorts of pleasant things 
that their confused voices had only whispered 
in my ears before. — “ Happy mortal ! thou 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


95 


hast long years before thee. Thou art rich, 
thou hast the gift of pleasing. Finally, why 
be modest,' thou art handsome. Thou wast 
born under a lucky star ; thy father is proud 
of thee, thy mother smiles at thee ; nothing 
is impossible for thee.” I believe, that with- 
out going beyond Vandelnay, I could have 
made serious progress in the good graces of 
one or two of the charming persons who were 
there. But, without seeming to interfere, my 
mother was on the watch, and if sometimes that 
great amusement called flirting seemed to be 
taking serious proportions, her eyes, as beauti- 
ful as they were good, recalled the trans- 
gressor to reason before there had been grave 
offense. 

“And my Uncle John? And my cousin Ro- 
sie?” you will say. “And the promised invi- 
tation ? ” 

I can swear by the Styx that I had not for- 
gotten them. The day after my arrival at Van- 
delnay, after a visit to Hannibal’s box, where 
fortunately all went well, I went alone into the 
park, and asked myself seriously what was best 
to be done. I knew certainly that I had only 
to give a sign, and my parents would dispatch, 


q6 my COUSIN ; J//55 CINDERELLA . 

if necessary, three embassadors to the Rue d’As- 
sas, to bring them in triumph to Poitiers. 

But was it prudent to give the sign ? In 
the case of my uncle there was nothing embar- 
rassing. To speak frankly, he was rather mo- 
rose, if not misanthropic. But such defects 
were excusable at his age ; besides, he made 
up for them by his past century wit, which 
was always brilliant and satirical — but in his 
younger days full of charm. Finally, there was 
not a chateau in France or Navarre where 
such a guest would not be in his proper place. 

Unfortunately, I was less sure about Rosie. 
I had not seen her for a long time, but I re- 
membered that she was tall for her age, thin, 
with something inharmonious in her move- 
ments. My impression was, that she was not 
beautiful ; though, to say the truth, I had never 
remarked whether she was or not. But during 
several years of my life I had heard severe 
voices say to my poor cousin, if by chance 
she had glanced into a mirror in passing : 

“What pleasure can a child who is so ugly 
have in looking at herself ? ” 

I do not know whether these repeated af- 
firmations convinced the subject of them of her 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


97 


ugliness. As for me, there was no doubt left 
in my mind ; ugly she came into the world, 
ugly she would live and die. Besides, I was 
accustomed to the luxury of the fashionable 
world and its elegance. I had entered it with 
the avidity of a fish which, put in water, at once 
uses his fins to reach the bottom. According 
to my ideas, a woman could not be beautiful if 
she was poorly dressed, and for too good rea- 
sons Rosie’s clothes could not resemble those 
of my well-dressed acquaintances. 

Finally, the remembrance I had of her was 
that of a reserved and silent person, very timid 
or very proud — probably both. What appear- 
ance could the poor child make among the 
women, young or well preserved, who filled 
Vandelnay with their laughter and the rustle 
of their silks. 

Would it not be cruel to expose her to the 
mortification of a society so little suited to her? 
The answer to this question did not seem doubt- 
ful to me, especially as I could not see how it 
would be possible for me to pay her much at- 
tention, my time was so fully occupied. 

The two sides being well considered, it 
seemed to me prudent to leave my Uncle John 
7 


gS MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

and his granddaughter in their fourth story of 
the Rue d’Assas until the time should come 
when we should have resumed our quiet life 
at Vandelnay. Thus we should enjoy their 
presence more, and the pleasure would be 
greater for them ; it would be better for every- 
body. 

Unfortunately, when the first series of guests 
had gone, we were not long without a second — 
the hunters. My father said to everybody : 

“ I want my son to enjoy himself at Van- 
delnay, so that he will have no desire to leave 
us in order to enjoy himself elsewhere.” 

But I saw, more and more plainly, that my 
father, secretly preoccupied by the progress of 
a slow malady which was to be fatal, put to 
my account the need for amusement which he 
himself experienced. As for my mother, she 
had no desires apart from his. For one rea- 
son or another, the long vacation of the law- 
school passed for me like a dream. 

Some visits to be made in the neighbor- 
hood to friends and relatives, all gay people, 
took what little time I had left. Briefly, when 
the sun rose on the fourteenth of November, 
Uncle John and his granddaughter were still 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


99 

in their own home, or if they were not, I had 
nothing to do with it. 

I had to leave my parents in the evening 
after dinner, to catch the express. In the after- 
noon, my father sent for me to come to his li- 
brary, and spoke to me as follows : 

“ My dear boy, you are going back. To tell 
the truth, I do not feel an overwhelming de- 
sire to see you pass a first examination in the 
code, but I expect you to become an accom- 
plished man of the world, and I think you are 
fairly started. You will do me the justice to 
acknowledge that I do not interfere with you — 
I, who have never known what it was to be 
young and free.” 

He stopped for some moments and uttered a 
sigh, in which I heard the sad regrets for a 
youth that was gone. I wanted to console 
my father. I remembered him, fifteen years 
younger, occupying the same place at the end 
of the table, presided over by the “ ancestors.” 
But what could I say? Presently he resumed: 
“Never forget that you are named Vandelnay. 
There are some hundreds of names in France 
which are more illustrious, a few which are 
older, none with fewer stains. In two or three 


100 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

years, if God wills, you may be one of the best 
matches in society. Do not waste all the rare 
advantages you possess. Try not to do foolish 
things ; at least do nothing dishonorable. And 
to avoid so doing, go into society, and only the 
best, though I hear that that is terribly deterio- 
rated. You will come to see us this winter, will 
you not?” 

I went off without “ Hannibal,” one of my 
friends having given me a good price for him 
for the hunting season. With what pleasure I 
went back to my pretty little apartment, to my 
dear boulevard ! 

When I went to inscribe myself at the law- 
school on the day of my arrival, I remembered 
that it was not far from the Rue d’Assas. It 
would have been a good chance to pay a visit 
to Rosie. But I met friends who took me off 
with them, and I went back to my own quarter 
without having accomplished this duty. 


XIL 

With one or two exceptions, the houses of 
my acquaintances were still closed ; but during 
the first days I had no time to be lonely. I 
left some cards, had several serious con- 
versations with my tailor, and paid some bills. 
Then I had to find some horses, two for the 
phaeton and a good saddle horse, then to see 
the carriage-maker, and to choose a larger 
stable, and to assure myself of an English 
specialist — what must the ghosts of the “an- 
cestors” have' thought — to whom to confide 
my stable. 

These different affairs ended, I was on the 
point of having nothing to do, when accident 
put an amusement, a charming distraction in my 
path. 

Madame X did not belong to the fashion- 

able world, to tell the truth ; but there are 


102 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

lower circles which have some good qualities. 
She was a widow, and confessed to thirty years. 
Rich, very beautiful, concealing under a most 
correct exterior a real love of intrigue, she 
seemed, as soon as we met, to value my atten- 
tions. Putting false modesty aside, I may say 
that my progress in her good graces was singu- 
larly rapid. I had not been in her house six 
times when she asked me if I liked pictures? 
With the candor of an inexperienced young 
man, I confessed that I knew nothing about 
them. 

“It is a pity,” she said, with a smile which 
suddenly created a wild love of art in me. “ I 
should have asked you to have the good- 
ness to take me one of these days to the 
Louvre.” 

At present — I do not wish to offend the sus- 
ceptibilities of certain novel-writers — the Louvre 
is horribly out of fashion, at least for this special 
purpose. But at that epoch it was not so. 
Our artistic expedition took place the next day, 
and we had not taken fifty steps in the salon carré 
before I had lost all fear of exposing my shame- 
ful ignorance about pictures. I had not even 
the chance of finding out whether my com- 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 103 

panion was more learned than myself, for she 
made no effort to bring the conversation, which 
had taken a completely different direction, back 
to painting. It was the first time that I had 
made love, in all the extent and signification, 
future and present, of the term, and I have ob- 
served on this and like occasions, that the 
words of the song are less important than the 
music. 

Briefly, everything was going perfectly well, 
considering that it was my first attempt ; we 
were passing slowly through the nearly de- 
serted rooms, walking closely enough together 
to speak almost in whispers, when I was brought 
back to earth, from the heights in which I was 
soaring, by the sudden exclamation in a foreign 
tongue which struck my ear: 

“ Oh Master Gastie ! ” 

I trembled as if King Charles IX had 
suddenly confronted me with his problematical 
arquebus, and recognized — ’Lisbeth î I honestly 
believe she was occupied with the identical 
knitting which absorbed her at Vandelnay 
while she overlooked the horticultural efforts of 
my cousin and myself. Instinctively I looked 
for Rosie, and saw her seated before an easel, on 


104 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

which she was sketching a copy of a Ma- 
donna. 

Of course no one could think that the 
meeting was very agreeable to any of us, 
except, perhaps, to ’Lisbeth, who was radiant. 
Rosie appeared the most annoyed. Doubtless 
she was not much pleased at being sur- 
prised in her working-dress by her cousin, 
and by an unknown person who was elegance 
itself. 

As for me, I wished myself a hundred miles 
away, and my companion was not much more 
at her ease. We looked at each other without 
speaking, and the situation was becoming ab- 
surd, when, with remarkable tact, my cousin ex- 
tended her hand, as if my presence there was 
the most natural thing in the world. 

“So you have come back,” she said, in a 
voice which was wonderfully sweet, though it 
trembled almost imperceptibly. “ Are my uncle 
and my aunt well?” 

I answered in the same strain, and expatiated 
on the beauties of Rosie’s painting, without 
leaving the side of Madame X . 

“When can I find you at home?” I asked, 
so as to put an end to a conversation which, 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 105 

in spite of our efforts, was not very agree- 
able. 

“ Every day after five o’clock.” 

“ I will go to see you very soon. Is my uncle 
well?” 

“ Very well, thank you. Good-by ! ” 

“ Good-by ! ” 

I gently led my companion far from the place 
where the meeting had taken place. With a 
singular air, she asked : 

“ So you did not know that your cousin came 
to the Louvre to copy ‘ Murillos ’ ? ” 

“To begin with, she is my cousin, if you 
like,” I replied, with diplomacy. “We are re- 
lated in the twentieth degree. She has no for- 
tune and does not go into society. So you 
need have no fear — ” 

“ But you seem intimate ? ” 

I told Rosie’s history briefly, and how we 
had lived under the same roof until I went to 
college. 

“And you have never been in love with 
her?” my companion asked. 

“ In love with Rosie ! ” 

The idea seemed so absurd that I laughed 
aloud. 


I 06 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


“ Poor child,” I said, when 1 was serious 
again ; “ I can not imagine any one’s falling in 
love with her.” 

Madame X looked at me as if to see if I 

was in earnest. Then, doubtless satisfied with 
her examination, she brought the conversation 
back to subjects which interested us both. Five 
minutes later, a cab was carrying my goddess 
back to her dwelling. Then, being free, I 
returned to the room where Rosie was paint- 
ing. At length I should be able to unbur- 
den myself to some one about my new con- 
quest. 

The young artist had gone back to her Vir- 
gin, and ’Lisbeth had resumed her knitting. I 
approached with an air of importance such as 
D’Artagan must have had when he brought 
back the queen’s diamonds from England, 
and speaking so as to be heard only by my 
cousin : 

“ My good Rosie, I am sure I can trust 
you, that you will not speak of what you have 
seen.” 

She turned red and pale in a moment, keep- 
ing her black eyes, honest and frank, like her 
grandfather’s, fixed on me. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. ï0 ; 

“Have no fear,” she replied, simply. Then, 
with rather a sad smile, she added : 

“ Besides, to whom should I speak ? I see 
no one.” 

“Do you often come here?” 

“ Every day.” 

“To paint copies?” 

“ Between us, I am afraid that my originals 
would not shine in the Louvre.” 

“ But,” I exclaimed, foolishly enough, “ you 
must have a whole museum of copies in the 
Rue d’Assas ! When I go to see you, you can 
show me the collection.” 

She began to paint again with the serious- 
ness with which, from a child, she had always 
worked. 

“ My copies are dispersed,” she replied, 
with more of melancholy than embarrassment ; 
“ 1 sell them to churches which are not rich 
enough to buy real Murillos.” 

“ Poor Rosie ! ” I thought, and I had ac- 
cused her of abandoning my Uncle John for 
the pleasure of daubing on canvas. It was 
certainly not for ‘amusement that she painted! 

I felt all at once a sincere esteem and affec- 
tion for the courageous girl. And then she 


I08 MY COUSIN ; MISS CI NDERELLA . 

was my confidante, the confidante of my first 
secret. 

With the tendency we all experience to 
come back to the subject which is uppermost 
in our thoughts, I said to her, very proud of 
the falsehood to which my honor as a gentle-, 
man forced me : 

“ You understand, cousin, that you would 
be quite wrong to suppose that a — there is any- 
thing between that lady and me. But a wom- 
an’s reputation is such a delicate thing ! At your 
age you can not understand certain things.” 

“ Oh ! ” she replied, looking at me once 
more ; “ according to years I am only twenty ; 
but the life I lead makes me at least thirty. I 
feel myself much older than you, Gastie ! ” 

I experienced an unknown pleasure in listen- 
ing to her rich voice, and as I listened, I re- 
marked that we had employed the “ vous ” 
instead of the “ tu ” of our infancy. 

“ Why,” I asked, “ is it that we do not 
‘ tutoyer' each other as at Vandelnay ?” 

My question no doubt annoyed her, for she 
lifted her brush from the canvas. 

I thought I understood that I kept her from 
working, and that she wished me to go. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 109 

“You have yourself given the reason, ” she 
said. “We are no longer at Vandelnay.” 

I felt a rush of emotion of which I was 
proud. Why should we not appreciate our 
own noble sentiments as well as those of 
others ? 

“What matter?” I replied. “Are we not 
as good friends as we used to be ? Listen, 
Rosie ; would you not like to have a sure and 
devoted friend, who would tell you everything, 
and who would even consult you? for to me, 
also, it seems that you are older than I am. I 
will come and see you often. You do not know 
how glad I am to see you again. I assure you 
that I am not a bad fellow, and that I am very 
fond of you.” 

“I am sure of it,” she said, as if she was not 
paying much attention, as she began to put up 
her brushes. “ So we are good friends again. 
When you come to see us, do not come be- 
fore five o’clock if you want to see me. I 
am only afraid that I shall not be an amusing 
friend. I know no one, and none of the news,” 

“ How can you say that?” I said, laughingly. 
“You know everything. You told my Uncle 
John the result of my last examination.” 


IIO MY COUSIN ,. ; MISS CINDERELLA . 

“ Shall I tell him that we have met?” she 
asked, without noticing my remark. 

I was forced to agree that it would be bet- 
ter not to speak of my visit to the Louvre. 
We said good-by, promising to meet soon 
again. 


XIII. 


I WAS the happiest of men, and the proud- 
est. I tasted the joys of my first serious con- 
quest. I only lived for Madame X . I 

tried to meet her in society — a society a little 
less aristocratic than that which I had been in 
the habit of frequenting. 

When odious duties kept me from her I had 
but one consolation, but one desire — to speak of 
her. It was not that temptations did not come 
every day to put my constancy to the test. 
One might have thought that I wore the be- 
loved name on my hat, as sailors have the 
names of their ships, in gilt letters. I venture 
to say that I might easily have enlisted under 
other colors. Coquetries, languishing looks, 
insinuations more or less clear, notes, anony- 
mous or signed — all the arrows of the femi- 
nine quiver fell on me as on a living target. I 


!I2 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

swore to the queen of my heart to adore her 
until my ast breath, and I was perfectly de- 
termined to keep my oath. 

Therefore glances, little attentions, even let- 
ters, left me as cold as marble, which seemed 
to increase the audacity of the aggressors. 

At first I did not speak, even to my inti- 
mate friends, of the passion which consumed 
me. But as I came to mention the charms 

of Madame X (I would have died before 

naming her) these young men replied by prais- 
ing some one else, and, dreadful to relate, 
they sometimes named her ! In such cir- 
cumstances, the conversation was like one of 
Vergil’s Eclogues, where two shepherds in turn 
celebrate the charms of their loved one. 

But in my cousin I found an auditor who, 
if not enthusiastic, was at least willing to hear 
me, and had no personal motive for interrupt- 
ing me. So I went to see her very often, and 
almost always at the museum. In the Rue 
d’Assas, we always found a pretext at some 
time during my visit of leaving my uncle with 
his books, so as to talk freely. 

Certainly, I took care to remember that I 
was speaking to a young girl. But Rosie had 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA . 113 

told me herself that for reason and good sense 
she might have been thirty. 

“ My poor dear/’ I said to her, with an air 
of wisdom, “ in all that concerns love you are a 
child. You have no idea what it means." 

Then I made her long confidences on the 
subject in which I considered myself past-mas- 
ter, and, like the professors of mineralogy, who 
takes stones from their pockets to prove their 
theories, I showed as specimens notes received 
in the morning. 

Sometimes, to tell the whole truth, the pupil 
threw, innocently enough, some drops of cold 
water over the ardent convictions of her mas- 
ter. This simple nature had a mania for mak- 
ing objections. I always had an answer ready, 
and managed to have the last word ; but some- 
times as I went down-stairs I felt less proud of 
myself, less satisfied with others, less sure of a 
happy future. 

This inexperienced child had depths of log- 
ic and a delicate penetration which surprised 
me. What I found the most difficult to pardon 
her was her small appreciation of the happiness 
I gave to or received from another. It seemed 

as if this gold was only a base metal in her eyes. 

8 


1 14 MY COUSIN , MISS CINDERELLA. 

“You really understand nothing about it,” 
I said one day when I had lost patience ; “ you 
are made for the humdrum life of every 
day.” 

“ And you for its rose-marmalade,” my cous- 
in replied. “ But the humdrum life is the 
most lasting; you will find it out sooner or 
later.” 

From that day on, in our great discussions I 
called her “ Miss Cinderella,” to which she re- 
plied by asking news of Madame “ Rose-mar- 
malade.” I was more vexed than I appeared, 
and I said : 

“ But after all, you have seen her, you can 
not deny her beauty ! ” 

“ Oh ! ” replied my cousin, with a grimace, 
“ it is easy to be beautiful if one has nothing 
else to do ! Give me her dressmaker and milli- 
ner. I can do the rest, for I know how to 
paint ! ” 

The first time I was furious at this insinua- 
tion. But some hours later, when I was with 

Madame X , I could not help looking at her 

more critically than I had done before. I was 
angry with Rosie for her insinuations. What 
business was it of this child’s ? 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 115 

Near the end of the winter I discovered 
something much more serious, which nearly 

killed me. Madame X proved to be a 

despicable coquette, to give her no worse name, 
and she was deceiving me, as much as she 
could, with a rich financier, who knew how to 
use his money. 

During two whole days I was ashamed to 
go and tell Rosie my trouble. On the third, I 
was so unhappy that I could hold out no long- 
er, and I went to spread out my griefs before 
her. 

“ Poor friend,” she said, “ I pity you with 
my whole heart.” 

Words of compassion came from her lips, 
but her eyes shone with a light which told an- 
other story. Doubtless, she experienced the 
satisfaction so dear to all women of saying : 

“ I foresaw it all ! ” 

In any case, she did not say it, and she acted 
wisely, for I think I could have beaten her had 
she done so. 

“ Ah ! Rosie,” I exclaimed, “ what will be- 
come of me ? I can never be consoled. What a 
false wretch ! ” 

“Others will console you,” she said. “If I 


H 6 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

can read aright, there are in the world com- 
passionate souls quite ready to repair the 
wrongs of Madame Rose-mar — ” 

My features must have assumed a terrible 
aspect at this joke, for my cousin stopped 
short 

At the end of a week, my sorrow was not 
assuaged. I tried to go into society. Alas ! the 
sight of a woman cut me to the heart. Some 
exasperated me by their mocking air, thinly 
veiled by smiles. Others made me indignant 
by a certain appearance of well-disguised 
pleasure. Did they by chance imagine I 
could replace by another the faith I had 
lost ? 

“ Ah ! Rosie,” I exclaimed one day, “ it is 
hard at my age to despise all women.” 

“All?” she said, looking at me with big se- 
vere eyes. 

“Yes, all,” I replied, stamping my foot, “ex- 
cept a saint, who is my mother.” 

“And me?” she asked, with a look which 
was quite different from the long affectionate 
glance of other days. 

The question seemed so absurd from her that 
I found strength of mind for a joke. 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. uy 

“ Oh ! you, Miss Cinderella, you are not a 
woman, and I congratulate you sincerely.” 

Fortune took pity on my state. The follow- 
ing day, I learned that one of my intimate 
friends had just bought a yacht, and was going 
off the following week to cruise in the Grecian 
Archipelago. I hurried to his house to see if he 
would give me a cabin. 

“ Except my own,” he said, “ you may have 
them all ; I shall be entirely alone.” 

“ How extraordinary ! This long voyage 
alone ! What an idea ! ” 

“ My friend, I tell you plainly that I shall be 
a lugubrious companion. I am leaving France 
to try to forget a great sorrow, a cruel ingrati- 
tude.” 

I took his hand and pressed it silently. 

“And I,” I said in my turn, “ I am going, so 
that the perfidious woman who has wounded 
me may not have the pleasure of watching my 
agony.” 

With such a beginning, we poured out our 
hearts to each other. Fortunately, we had no 
ideas beyond a yacht-voyage. 

If our youthful despair had taken the less 
healthy direction of a revolver or poison, I am 


1 1 8 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


sure that we could have so intoxicated ourselves 
by our words as to have committed an irrepara- 
ble stupidity. 

Before separating, we discussed many things, 
the most important being as to how we should 
leave. My friend was in favor of disappearing 
silently, with dignity, something like “ a despair 
which loses itself in immensity ” — I still remem- 
ber his words. 

I was for a very different course. 

“ Why should we fly like theives, when it is 
we who have been plundered, betrayed, misun- 
derstood ? ” 

I shall astonish no one in stating that my 
opinion carried the day. We began our leave- 
takings, going about with heart-broken airs, like 
men who after a duel appear with their arms 
in slings. 

Three days after, all my friends and ac- 
quaintances knew that I was going to one of 
the desolate shores of the archipelago, to die 
of a broken heart. I had pronounced no name, 
feeling that in such a case the least indiscretion 
would be unworthy of a gentleman. However, 
I perceived that no one was in doubt about 
my history. The favor of Madame X and 


MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. 119 

her perfidy toward me were perfectly well 
known. 

Oh, sublime cowardice of a loving heart ! I 
adored the faithless one more than ever ; I 
would have forgotten all at a sign from her. In 
a fit of great humility, I told my cousin so, when 
I said good-by to her, the night before I set 
sail. 

“ She knows that I am going,” I said. “ It is 
impossible that she does not know it. Will she 
let me depart like this ? Shall I not find when 
I get home a letter with the word ‘stay.’ 
Will she not write to me to stop my voyage, 

‘ to come back to my chain ’ ? ” 

My cousin did not answer, and the look of 
annoyance on her face recalled to me that, in 
spite of the thirty years which she claimed, I 
ought to be more circumspect in my words. 

“ And you, Rosie,” I said, so as to break off 
from the dangerous subject, “ I suppose you will 
write to me?” 

“ I fear,” she said, “ that my letters would 
be horribly tiresome.” 

“Oh no,” I protested, politely. “ You can 
tell me about yourself, about your painting, and 
about my Uncle John. On the contrary, your 


120 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

letters would please me very much. I know 
that you are my devoted friend, and when the 
heart is wounded — ” 

I stopped overcome by emotion. My cousin 
replied, with a sigh of resignation : 

“ I will write to you since you desire it. 
Your address?” 

“ Poste rastente, Constantinople.” 

We rejoined my Uncle John, and I shook 
hands with him cordially in taking leave. I 
kissed my cousin on both cheeks, and went 
home to finish my packing. I had written to 
my parents that I was going to be absent for 
two months, and excused myself from going to 
take leave of them by the suddenness of my 
departure. 

“ I approve what you are doing,” my father 
wrote. “ It is a good thing to travel at your age. 
Observe carefully, so as to remember what you 
see, to tell us about it when you return. I envy 
you. How much you will amuse yourself!” 

My poor father, he did not know that I went 
off with despair in my heart ! He spoke of my 
return. Does the traveler led by despair know 
when his journey will end, or how ? 

The moment of my departure came, and the 


12 1 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

unfaithful one had made no sign. My friend 
and I had the appearance of two culprits con- 
demned to death, when the Galathea bore us 
from the shores of Provence, where our eyes 
in vain tried to discern two shadows. 


XIV. 


Let compassionate souls reassure them- 
selves. 

The heavy burden of despair which weighed 
down my heart seemed to diminish as did the 
coal in our hold. The air of the Mediteranean 
must possess some singularly consoling proper- 
ties, for before we had touched at Naples I 
could already foresee the possibility of living — 
with my wounded heart. 

“ I shall suffer till my last day,” I thought, as 
I watched the deep blue furrow left by the 
untiring screw behind us. “ But I feel that I 
shall have the courage to live. Only let no one 
ever speak to me again of love ! Let the irony 
of this terrible word never strike my ears. Only 
one woman shall ever say that she has con- 
quered, subjugated, betrayed Gaston de Vandel- 
nay.” 

When we put to sea after a visit to Pompeii, 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 123 

this beautiful corpse from which profane hands 
have taken so much of its winding-sheet of ashes, 
it seemed to me that the remembrance of Ma- 
dame X , and that of the beauties whose 

apartments and jewels I had just seen, dated 
from about the same century. 

As we sailed by the coasts of Cythera — 
we would have been ashamed to lose an hour 
in going ashore there — I smiled with pride as 
if I were looking at the devastated city of an 
enemy from henceforth powerless. Ah ! we 
should never boast! 

At the Parthenon, under whose yellow-tint- 
ed columns the goddess still seemed to glide, 
clothed in the long folds of her white tunic, 
mysterious voices mingling with the sacrificial 
incense, murmured in my ears : 

“ Live without love, and you shall live 
happy ! ” 

And already I experienced a vague satisfac- 
tion in living, in breathing the perfume of the 
jasmines floating through the dusty streets — in 
following with charmed looks the young black- 
eyed Athenians, as they filled their amphoræ at 
the fountain. 

To sum up — shall I confess ? — while I climbed 


124 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

the slopes of Galata to go to get my letters at 
the French post-office of Constantinople, one 
thought absorbed me: 

“ If only she has not written to me to come 
back ! ” 

In that case I should have been the most un- 
happy man in the world — forced to say good-by 
so soon to this captivating East, of which I 
had seen so little. Oh! the holy city with its 
minarets and cupolas bathed in verdure ! Oh ! 
the Bosporus, with its double row of silent 
palaces ! 

The women, draped in their pale-colored 
silks and satins, permitting their big black eyes 
to be seen through the convenient muslin of the 
yachmak! Those eyes which shone so brilliant- 
ly under the fringe of hair golden with henna ! 

Only three letters were waiting for me at the 
post, two on which I counted, from my mother 
and Rosa ; the third, with an unknown hand- 
writing, the letters having the square look of a 
professional writer. The big envelope was in 
yellow paper, which gave it a business-like ap- 
pearance. But one must not trust to appear- 
ances. This is what I read in the mysterious 
missive which I had opened first: 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


125 


“ Sir : 

“We have met several times in a salon 
which is emblazoned with one of the oldest 
names of France, but I will no more name the 
masters of the house than I will allow you to 
divine my own. 

“You will ask how much I have known 
you, if we have often talked or danced togeth- 
er, what we have said to each other, if I 
pleased you, if you paid any court to me? 
Perhaps, also, you are curious — a curiosity 
which is flattering for me — to know my im- 
pressions about yourself. Here is a long list 
of questions ; but I will only answer the last. 

“Does it interest you less than the others? 
Confess that it does not. 

“Very well, I think things of you — that I 
have been careful not to tell you, or even to 
allow you to suspect. 

“ But reassure yourself, it was neither from 
modesty nor from fear of your disdain. 

“ I know your tastes. I have sometimes 
thought you less particular than you had a 
right to be as to women. I have perceived 
in you an amount of indulgence which would 
encourage a more modest person than I am. 


i2 6 MY COUSIN \ MISS CINDERELLA. 


“ But what should I have gained in having 
the gates of the temple opened for me ? I 
should have found myself in too large a com- 
pany. I only appreciate chapels which are 
closely shut, with a single shrine, where a pure 
flame burns, and is never extinguished. 

“Your enthusiasms, as nearly as I under- 
stand them, resemble decorations illuminated 
by Bengal fires, which pass quickly to make 
room for the next thing on the programme. 

“With all this — which will surprise you — I 
have suffered much, and I suffer still, for I 
love you. 

“ Do not laugh too much, do not say, ‘ Oh ! 
still another!’ 

“Yes, I love you, and doubtless I am not 
the first who has written it to you. But what 
distinguishes me from the others is, that I shall 
always love you, and that you will never know 
who I am. You shrug your shoulders? You 
say that I play a well-known air? You will see 
that it is not so. In ten years you will know no 
more than you do to-day. And in ten years I 
shall love you still. 

“ Besides, if I were like the others, I should 
not have waited for you to be seven or eight 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 127 

hundred miles from France to tell you that you 
are always in my thoughts, that I would give 
my life, if it belonged to me, to beautify yours, 
that your eyes, when they meet mine, give me 
the greatest happiness that I have ever known 
— notwithstanding, the tenderness of the best 
and noblest of human beings surrounds me 
with a constant adoration. But I love you, 
and I have been so unhappy at having never 
told you so, that I try to tell it now, to see if I 
shall be happier. 

“ This is all, and our correspondence ought 
to stop here. Only, I should like to know if 
you have received this letter, which contains, 
I have the vanity to believe, something infi- 
nitely precious — a heart that has never be- 
longed to another. You will tell me sincerely 
what you think of my folly. But all the good 
or the bad which you can say will not pre- 
vent these being the last lines written to 
you by 

“A Devoted Friend.” 

The signature of this singular missive was a 
pansy delicately sketched with the pen. A 
postscript invited me to reply under complicat- 


128 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


ed initials to the post-office of the quarter of the 
Madelaine, Paris. 

No matter what may be thought of me, I 
will confess that I reread the letter twice, before 
opening the other two, which certainly were far 
from containing anything as interesting. My 
mother gave me details of the daily life at Van- 
delnay, ending her fourth page with pressing 
recommendations to take care of myself, and to 
“ be prudent in a country where a man’s life 
counts for so little.” Certainly in writing these 
lines, my dear mother had visions of poignards, 
and of leathern sacks in which two victims of 
different sex are thrown struggling into the 
Bosporus ! 

As for my cousin’s letter, it was written as 
she talked. The same simple, reasonable affec- 
tion, far removed from all exaltation of thought 
or language. Poor Miss Cinderella ! In spite 
of all, her prose might have seemed charming 
to me but for the unknown rival, in contrast 
with whom this simple soul seemed singularly 
commonplace. But who could this other wom- 
an be, at once romantic and modest, whose 
love fell on me as the perfumed flowers fall on a 
passer through a grove of orange-trees ? Could 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


129 


I have seen her without remarking her? Where 
had I met her? By what involuntary charm 
had I captivated her? 

For an hour, I turned over in my mind four 
or five of the most aristocratic salons that I 

had frequented in the time when Madame X 

had not enticed me into a lower sphere. I had 
vague remembrances of certain faces. 

I called my imagination to my aid to paint 
the unknown’s portrait. I thought of her as 
tall and blonde, a dreamy, poetic creature. Why 
had she given this idea of profound love to me, 
who felt myself unworthy of so precious an 
offering to me, who had allowed my head to 
be turned by the graces and admiration of a 
coquette? Nevertheless, my unknown corre- 
spondent seemed to have few illusions about 
me. 

The proof was in certain phrases of her let- 
ter, and in the distrust of me which she did not 
hesitate to manifest. 

Oh, sudden and inexplicable variations of 
the human heart ! The evening before, my 
young reputation of a man of the world ap- 
peared to me as a crown of glory, picturesquely 
veiled by the funereal crape of a treason. And 
9 


130 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

now I had only one desire — to convince this 
gentle friend that I was a faithful and discreet 
chevalier worthy of being loved, worthy of be- 
ing admitted to see her, of kneeling before her, 
of kissing her hands, or at least the folds of her 
dress. My enthusiasm was such that I could 
have started at once to seek for the tender 
creature in every street and house of Paris, to 
watch for her a month, if necessary, at the post- 
office to which she was to go for my answer. 

On reflection, I saw that I must take other 
means of reaching her if I wished one day to 
solve the mystery. Without waiting to go back 
to the wharf to reach the Galathea, I went to a 
hotel in Pera, and asked for a room and writing- 
materials. I remember that my letter began in 
this wise : 

“ Madame : What you ironically term ‘ my 
temple,’ is now only a heap of ruins, on which 
rises the ‘ well closed ’ chapel in which you 
wish that I should worship you. The poor 
lamp of my heart is kindled before the altar. 
Only one thing is lacking to this new worship — 
the image, the name of her who has converted 
me from my gross errors. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 13 1 

“ I shall wait for this name ; my respect begs 
kneeling for this image concealed behind its 
veil of purity. Apostle of a true and pure love, 
you have with a single word overthrown my 
idol. This is only the half of your good work, 
and I have the right to say to you : Will you 
give nothing to replace what you have de- 
stroyed? ” 

My new zeal exhausted itself in many closely 
written pages, in a manner which I am afraid 
would make most men of twenty-five — my age 
then — smile. 

I confessed and repented of my past errors, 
particularly regarding Madame X , not nam- 

ing her, of course, except by well-veiled allusions. 
For the future, I engaged m}^self by the most 
formidable oaths to be the model of lovers. 
But I let it be understood that all my fine 
resolutions depended on the new ruler of my 
life ; that if I had an immediate answer I guar- 
antied my perseverance; that if my beautiful 
correspondent executed her threats of perpetual 
silence, God knows what would become of me ! 
Should I ever return ? Should I not pursue my 
wanderings, hardened sinner as I would become, 


132 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


from Turkey to India, from India to China, from 
China to Japan, and farther if possible? My 
parents would die of grief! 

Whose would be the fault? 

An answer, an answer containing even a 
gleam of hope, and I would return to France at 
once, corrected of all my errors, with a new 
heart in my breast. She could do as she liked. 
I was really almost out of my mind. 

When my letter had gone, I counted the 
hours before I could have an answer. Do I say 
hours? It was really two weeks at that time, 
for the Eastern express from Paris to Varna was 
unknown. 

During these two weeks my friend and I vis- 
ited the various bazaars and mosques from Stam- 
boul to Scutari. Besides, we got up steam on 
the Galathea more than once and went to 
the Islands of Princes, or to the upper Bospo- 
rus, or to the coasts of the Black Sea, where, I 
may say — in parentheses — that I and my new 
chapel — still statueless — were nearly drowned. 
But we had no gallant adventures, there was not 
the slightest temptation, which for young con- 
verts of my temperament is the surest guaranty 
for perseverance. I can not tell what would 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


133 


have happened if I had been on probation in a 
country where the women were less guarded. 

At length the French mail-steamer was sig- 
naled by the Galathea, whose flags I had 
learned by heart. 

O joy ! at the post they gave me an envel- 
ope with the same handwriting as the letter 
which I had reread so often. My divinity was 
not inexorable, and I should be spared the jour- 
ney to Japan. 

“ Sir,” she wrote, “ I love your parents too 
much — without knowing them — to deprive them 
for so long a time of the presence of their son. 
You asked for an answer ; here it is. As for the 
rest, you will allow me to say that I can not take 
all that you say for pure gold. I distrust such 
easy and sudden conversions, and I believe one 
must suffer a little, have at least some wounds 
by fire or steel, some confrontation with the 
beasts of the amphitheatre. 

“ But you must resign yourself. Your chap- 
el — I congratulate you on having built it so 
easily — will one day, if it please God, hold a 
statue which will be faithfully honored. But it 
will not be mine, which can not leave the mod- 


134 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

est niche where duty has placed it. I repeat 
that I love you, that I shall love you always. It 
gives me a sweet satisfaction to have told you, 
that you are no longer ignorant of it, though 
you are ignorant of all the rest. Since I was a 
child, I do not remember to have experienced a 
like happiness. 

“ Perhaps, as you are coming back, I shall 
see you in the distance from time to time, but 
my secret will be better kept than before, as it 
ought to be ; I should die of shame if it were 
otherwise. But I shall tenderly watch your 
progress in life. If you remain worthy of me, I 
will tell you with my pen from time to time 
that I know it, that I am proud of you, and 
grateful, until the day when another, who will 
be your wife, will tell you such things with her 
lips. I blush for my own weakness, for I had 
sworn to myself to write you only once. But 
this weakness harms no one. It will not keep 
me from fulfilling any of the duties of my life — 
and you, my friend, until now, you have hardly 
had duties.” 

A pansy, as before, replaced a signature. I 
pressed it to my lips. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


135 


“ Who knows,” I whispered to myself, “ other 
lips have perhaps pressed this flower ?” 

There were but two letters for me in the 
post ; the one I have cited, and a second from 
my mother. 

Nothing ^from my cousin this time ; but I 
had no right to complain, for poor Miss Cinder- 
ella was still waiting for one from me — the an- 
swer to hers. What could I say to that quiet, 
prosaic person, so far removed from my present 
frame of mind that I should have been forced 
to rack my brains to send her twenty lines ! 
Could I tell her of my platonic and epistolary 
success? Why do so? Could written words 
initiate that simple being into the mysteries of a 
great passion? 

/understood a great passion; I breathed it ; 
I moved in an atmosphere at once pure and 
intoxicating, as that of high mountains. 

Sometimes, astonished at the new sentiment 
which absorbed me, I was afraid that I was the 
prey of a passing fancy developed under the 
Eastern sun. Or perhaps I experienced, in spite 
of myself, the influence of a passionate tender- 
ness which came to me from afar. Perhaps my 
heart was wandering in pursuit of a phantom, 


1 36 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

which I should soon find to be no more than an 
incoherent dream. If ever accident or the con- 
stancy of my efforts revealed my unknown 
friend to me, should I not perceive my error 
and my incapability of loving her ? 

“ You will love her wildly if you ever dis- 
cover her,” my heart replied. “ If she escapes 
you, the crown of happiness will always be 
wanting to your life.” 

From that time every hour passed in that 
distant land seemed to me lost. I hastened 
to find my friend. “ Listen,” I said ; “ I must 
go back to Paris. Will you be angry with me 
if I desert you ? ” 

“ I was going to propose to you to leave,” 
said the lord and master of the Galathea. “ I 
bore myself horribly in this city, where the 
women are phantoms. The Parisians are like 
the lance of Achilles. If one is wounded by 
them — it is by them one must be healed. To- 
morrow at sunrise we will look back on this 
city, disappearing in floods of gold. But what 
has happened to you? You are radiant. I 
will wager that she has written to you to come 
back.” 

I told my story discreetly. Besides, under 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 137 

the circumstances, it would have been difficult 
to be indiscreet. 

“You seem to mein the position of aman 
who is going to be very much deceived/’ grum- 
bled this frightful skeptic. 

I hurried away so as not to do him a bodily 
harm. At dawn, when I heard the grating of 
the chain as they got up the anchor, I had 
hardly closed my eyes. Five days after my 
companion and I took our places in the express 
which leaves Marseilles at six o’clock in the 
evening. Only a few hours and I should breathe 
the same air as my lady of the pansies ! 


XV. 


The first thing I did in Paris was to go to 
the post-office in the quarter of the Madelaine, 
where I paid a considerable sum in postage. I 
had not lost my time during our five days’ voy- 
age, and the heavy package which fell in the 
letter-box, resembled a love-letter much less 
than a manuscript deposited by a young author 
furtively in the letter-box of a possible pub- 
lisher. 

There was everything in the package. Re- 
membrances of childhood and youth, detesta- 
tion of my past errors, protestations for the fu- 
ture, poems in honor of my new love, which 
from henceforth was to fill my life — all this 
mixed in the pages, which ended by an appeal 
to her mercy. 

“You could,” I said, “ always have left me 
ignorant of my happiness. Have you now the 
right to cause the misery of my whole life? 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 139 

What evil have I done you, that you should so 
torture me ? What do you fear from me ? Is 
not the name which I bear a guaranty that my 
sentiments are those of a gentleman? Do you 
not see that I venerate you as a saint, that I 
would content myself with seeing you from 
time to time, at a distance, if, as you say, an un- 
happy destiny separates us ? Or, do you think 
I shall love you less after I have seen you? Ah ! 
it is your soul, your heart that I love ! What 
does the rest matter! — But what folly ! I would 
wager ten of the best years of my life that the 
rest is charming ! ” 

I went directly from the Madelaine to the 
Louvre. 

Certainly, the tranquil Rosie was not the con- 
fidante I would have chosen for my romance. 
But I could not choose, and, besides, in default 
of other qualifications of a confidante, my cousin 
had that of perfect resignation. She would 
have charmed Corneille or Racine for this part. 
I found her, as I had done several months be- 
fore, copying the same Virgin, with ’Lisbeth 
busy with the same knitting. When she saw 
me, she uttered a little cry of surprise. 

“You! you have come back already? What 


1 40 my COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

has happened ? I did not expect you for a year, 
at least.” 

“ It has happened,” I replied, “ that your 
cousin is at once the happiest and the most 
unfortunate of men. See, read these letters.” 

“ Gently ! ” said my cousin, drawing back 
her hands as if from a hot iron. “ Your confi- 
dence honors me, but you forget to whom you 
speak, and I have had to acknowledge to my- 
self that I have listened rather too much to 
your confessions.” 

“You can read,” I insisted; “you will not 
repent having read these charming pages. I 
even counsel you to learn them by heart. 
You would be the gainer.” 

With a slight smile, she quietly laid down 
her pallete and brushes. Little by little the 
color rose in her cheeks, and when she had 
reached the end of the second letter, with her 
brilliant eyes, and her cheeks like deep-red 
roses, she was — I can not deny it — absolutely 
pretty. But at that moment I was very slight- 
ly interested in Rosie’s beauty. 

She slightly shrugged her shoulders — per- 
fectly shaped shoulders Î As she took up her 
work again, she replied : 


MY COUSIN . ; MISS CINDERELLA . i 4I 

“ You will be angry, but never mind ! 
Well, you are both crazy — she, to write such 
trash to a man whom she scarcely knows. 
Poor thing ! why can I not at once discover 
her name and address! ' I would make it my 
duty to hurry to her and say : 4 Beware ! ’ 
Women ought to warn each other. As for 
you, I think you are more ridiculous than be- 
fore, and I would bet this Murillo against my 
copy, that it is all the work of an ugly, senti- 
mental old woman. And it is for such a reason 
that you have cut short your fine journey to the 
East ! ” 

“ Rosie ! ” I almost shouted ; “ you were 
born commonplace, and commonplace you will 
die. I leave you, and I will only see you again 
when I shall have discovered my unknown cor- 
respondent ! Then you can judge if she is old 
and ugly ! ” 

“Very good!” she said, with her frank, 
good-natured laugh ; “ our separation will be 
rather long! You may be sure that she is too 
wise to make herself known. But let us sign 
a treaty of peace ; I will only say what pleases 
you. But my poor friend, what do you expect 
to do?” 


142 MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. 

“ Look for her all over Paris, house by 
house. And,. above all, let time convince her — 
if I sacrifice ten years of my life for it — that I 
am worthy of her, and that she may reveal 
herself to me ! ” 

“You would not be much better off if you 
found a married woman, mother of four chil- 
dren ! ” 

“ She might become a widow, and her chil- 
dren should be mine. In any case, I could see 
her sometimes. Without this woman, I do not 
wish to live. I adore her passionately ! ” 

I spoke in such an excited manner that 
’Lisbeth, who could not help hearing, plunged 
her head into her knitting. As for my 
cousin, she broke into a fit of laughter. I 
had never supposed her capable of such noisy 
gayety. 

“ My faith — ” I said, parodying the misan- 
thrope without intending it— “ I do not see why 
I am so ridiculous!” 

“ I beg your pardon, my good Gastie ; but 
I seem to see you as you were in this same 
place last autumn, doing the honors of the 
Louvre to a certain elegant creature. Do you 
remember Madame Rose-marmalade?” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


143 


She wiped her eyes, to which her laughter 
had brought becoming tears. 

“ By the way,” she resumed, “ do you know 
what I have just thought of? What if that 
superb person is making a fool of you by 
disguising her hand-writing ! What if your 
former passion and this is the same ! ” 

At first sight the idea was not so absurd, 
and I felt the color mounting to my forehead. 
But a few moments’ consideration reassured 
me. 

“ Listen,” I replied, motioning toward the 
Murillo with my head ; “ if to-morrow the di- 
rector of the Louvre were told, ‘ The picture 
which hangs there is by Mademoiselle Rosie,’ 
do you think he would believe it?” 

“ No ! ” sighed my cousin. 

“ Very well, the letters I have in my pocket 
resemble what that coquette would think or 
write as much as Murillo’s picture resembles 
yours. You must admit that I am a competent 
judge ? ” 

Rosie bent over her canvas, doubtless a little 
mortified at my frankness with respect to her 
talent. 

As I left her I said : 


144 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

“ I shall go to see my Uncle John very 
soon, but only when my lady of the pansies 
shall have answered my letter. I shall be 
glad to show you hers. But perhaps my con- 
fidences weary you ? ” 

“ No ! ” said my cousin, with her pleasant 
smile, “ I have been used to them for a long 
time. They really interest me.” 

We said good-by with no ill-feeling after a 
cordial shake of the hands. As I went down 
the wide steps I said to myself : 

“ Really, Rosie is getting to be a pretty girl 
— but what a prosaic one ! ” 


XVI. 

“ I knew of your return from the East 
through my granddaughter, and I suppose you 
have come to announce your departure for Van- 
delnay. Your parents must be expecting you.” 

My uncle received me with these words, 
when I went to present my respects to him some 
days later, having in my pocket a letter which 
I had received that morning. 

Leave for Vandelnay ! Put a great distance 
between myself and the charming woman whose 
tender, generous words consoled my heart ! how 
should I have the courage ? But the month of 
June was coming to an end. In another fort- 
night the lectures at the law-school would be 
over. As for the examination, I was as much 
prepared for it in medicine as in law. 

For months I had had no time to think of the 
code. But what pretext could I imagine for not 

leaving the capital? 
io 


14 6 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


“ My projects,” I replied, evasively, “ are 
vague at present.” 

This time I dared not speak to my uncle of 
his own visit to us. 

As soon as I was alone with Rosie, I began 
on the subject which I had most at heart. 

“ I am very unhappy ! ” I exclaimed. “ Read 
this charming letter. You will not find a word, 
not a comma, which does not show that the 
woman who wrote it was made for me. She 
hardly knows me, but her heart knows mine by 
a penetration which is almost supernatural. 
What she says is exactly what she ought to 
say. She loves me with a love which ennobles 
me in my own eyes, and will beautify my whole 
life. I think she could make a good and earnest 
man of me. She has already made me better. 
Is it possible that I am never destined to know 
her name?” 

My cousin read slowly, giving herself trouble, 
as if she were making out passages written in a 
foreign language, which it was necessary to 
translate line by line. But cold as she was, I 
could read in her face that the letter pleased 
her. 

“Yes,” she said, as she gave me back the 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


H 7 


paper. “ I begin to believe that this woman 
speaks sincerely, that she has a real love for 
you. But you are more experienced than I am 
in such matters — who can say if either of you 
would be better off if the cloud which conceals 
you from each other were blown away ? I saw 
a picture of Psyche the other day. It seemed 
to me that her story resembled yours. The 
love would end when the mystery did ! ” 

“ And it seems to me,” I said, threatening^, 
“that Miss Cinderella is making sport of her 
cousin.” 

“ I assure you that I am not,” she replied, 
most seriously. 

“ Then I do not understand, for you change 
your mind. You go from one extreme to an- 
other. I should like to see you worshiped all 
your life by a man of whom you could say noth- 
ing — neither if he were handsome or ugly, blind, 
thin, old — and even in a man, these things are 
less important. Ah ! I know what will happen 
if my cruel friend obstinately continues to con- 
ceal herself ! ” 

“I also; I know very well. You will aban- 
don such an obstinate person to her unhappy 
fate, and you will marry a good woman who 


1 4 8 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


will remind you of the little you know of her, 
but of whose age, face, and the rest you can 
judge for yourself. It seems to me that this 
conclusion is not so bad.” 

“ Bad or not, it is impossible. I shall die an 
old bachelor, leaving to your second son the 
fortune and name of Vandelnay.” 

“ You are crazy,” said my cousin, shrugging 
her shoulders. 

And our conversation ended for that day. 

At that season of the year, Paris, from a fash- 
ionable point of view, did not exist; my days 
and evenings dragged on heavily. My only 
resource was the conversation of my cousin ; 
I amused myself in converting her gently to 
my sentimental theories. I saw her every day, 
either at the Louvre or the Rue d’Assas. 
One day she said, laughingly, to me : 

“ Are you never afraid that you will do me 
harm in giving me wings? When they have 
quite grown, shall I be better off behind the 
bars of my cage? Now, at least, I have no idea 
or desire of flying away to the country of 
dreams.” 

“ I am not uneasy about you,” I replied. 
“ Your wings, if they are really growing, will 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 


149 


never be of much use to you. Do you remem- 
ber the winged creatures we used to visit to- 
gether at Vandelnay ? ” 

“Very well; the ducks of the poultry-yard. 
Thanks for the comparison ! ” 

“ What a trying person ! Who is speaking 
of ducks? I meant the swans. Neither you 
nor I have ever seen them fly.” 

“ Because they were happy where they 
were.” 

As she spoke, Rosie bent her head over her 
work with such a graceful motion of the neck 
that my comparison was truer than it seemed at 
first. 

On the tenth of July, I received a letter from 
my lady of the pansies. If I have remembered 
this date, it is because it marked the end of a 
correspondence which had given me great hap- 
piness during three months. I was not destined 
again to see the big, disguised handwriting, and 
the flowery signature at the end of her sweet 
confessions. On this day, instead of a single 
pansy, the mysterious hand had sketched a 
bouquet of them, sketched with exquisite art, 
even though it was easy to see that they were 
thrown on the paper without trouble. 


150 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

In these four pages, as closely written as if 
she did not wish to leave a space unfilled, there 
was always the same maternal tenderness, with 
a deeper note, in which I guessed something of 
hesitation. The letter ended with these lines : 

“ And now, my dear, we are going away. 
The green fields tempt us ; this heated Paris 
has not fresh air enough for us. Let us say 
good-by to it, for some months. In any case, 
you can be at ease. If your letters are sent to 
the usual address, I shall receive them, and you 
shall have mine, which will pass by Paris, for 
you will not know where I am. But what does 
that matter to you, when there is one thing of 
which you are sure ! Do you not feel that I 
love you? Here is a proof — at present, it is I 
who need your letters, it is I who ask you to 
write. Do not forget me at Vandelnay, where 
there are many distractions, I am told. At 
least, if you do forget me, let it be for a young 
girl worthy of you, and who will be your wife. 
Choose carefully when the time comes. To 
know that you were unhappy, or that you had 
made another person so, would be the great 
sorrow of my life/’ 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. i 5l 

As long as she was going to leave Paris, I 
had no reason for staying, so I prepared for my 
departure. 

But the prospect of a bustling life like that 
of the year before was insupportable to me. I 
wrote to my mother that I was tired, and that I 
earnestly desired to enjoy the most complete 
repose during the first days of my stay in the 
country. I also spoke to my parents of my de- 
sire to bring my uncle and cousin with me. I 
explained this wish, not without some hypoc- 
risy, by my desire to give the young girl and 
the old man the pleasure of a stay in the coun- 
try that would benefit them. But to tell the 
truth, I should not know what to do without 
my confidante. Alone at Vandelnay, with no 
one to whom I could speak of my lady of the 
pansies ! It was frightful to contemplate. 

My mother replied by the next post, sending 
a pressing invitation for my Uncle John and 
Rosie. What did I say ? An invitation ! she 
rather begged them to make a long visit to the 
old home, always theirs, which had been so long 
without them. The one objection, the difficulty 
which my Uncle John found in traveling, need 
not be thought of, as I would be with them. 


152 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

I knew very well what to do to make the 
inflexible baron consent. I went to see him at 
an hour when I supposed his granddaughter 
would be at the Louvre. 

“ Uncle John,” I said, “ you see before you 
an embassador, and here are his credentials.” 

I gave him my mother’s invitation. The let- 
ter was read with some scowls which I easily 
understood : 

“ Your mother is just as good as I have al- 
ways known her,” said my uncle. “ But what 
she asks is very difficult.” 

“ If it were ten times more difficult, it 
would still have to be done,” I replied, gravely. 
“ Rosie will be ill if she passes the summer in 
Paris.” 

I had touched his weak point. My uncle 
started as he would have done fifty years earlier 
at an insult. 

“ Rosie ill ! ” he exclaimed. “ What do you 
know about it ? ” 

“ She is changed,” I replied, coolly. “ She is 
thin, and her eyes look large ; she is getting 
bent over with too much work. Three days ago, 
during a little visit I made her at the Louvre, 
she coughed several times — a bad cough.” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 153 

“ She never complains.” 

“ Of course not, if you wait for her to 
complain ! She knows that you do not like 
change, and she is always ready to sacrifice 
herself!” 

“Yes, very ready to sacrifice herself!” re- 
peated my uncle, in an echo which resembled 
a roar. 

He turned his back to me in a kind of bad 
humor, as if I were responsible for my cousin’s 
unselfishness. 

“ When she comes in I will speak to her,” 
he muttered between his teeth, “she shall see 
a doctor to-morrow.” 

“To-morrow, my dear uncle, if you do not 
absolutely refuse, we three will take the express 
to Poitiers.” 

“ Not so fast, my nephew ; if my grand- 
daughter is ill, I must take her to some waters. 
I do not know a worse place than Vandelnay ; 
my rheumatism can testify.” 

What a singular fancy, not to be willing to 
go with me ! What was the reason of this re- 
sistance? Remembrance of the past? As I 
asked myself these questions, we heard Rosie’s 
voice singing in the antechamber. 


154 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

“ Listen ; does she seem ill? ” said my Uncle 
John. 

All my plans were upset. But I tried a sec- 
ond way of taking him by surprise when Rosie 
entered. 

“ Would you like that we should all start for 
Vandelnay together?” I asked, before my uncle 
had had time to say a word. “ Your grand- 
father wants very much to go ; but he is afraid 
of doing something you do not like.” 

The nightingale was suddenly silent. The 
lovely color in her cheeks faded, leaving them 
like lilies. 

“Start for Vandelnay — all together! Oh! 
what happiness ! ” murmured my cousin, allow- 
ing herself to fall into a chair. 

“ Wretch ! ” cried my uncle. “ She is going 
to faint.” 

“ And I told you she was ill ! ” I replied, in a 
low voice. 

Already the bright color was coming back. 
To judge from the symptoms, this illness was 
only the effect of a great joy. Rosie asked, in 
a voice which would have sent my uncle back 
to India : 

“ Grandfather, is it true that we are going ? ” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 155 

She looked at me as she questioned him. 

“ Go quickly and begin your packing,” I 
decided,' audaciously. “We must be at the 
station to-morrow morning exactly at eight 
o’clock.” 

We were there before half-past seven. I do 
not remember any day’s journey that ever went 
so quickly as that. My good action was already 
receiving its reward ! 


XVII. 


My dispatch had gone faster than our ex- 
press. The château had put on an air of re- 
joicing to wait for us, but with the contented 
look of people who are happy for themselves, 
and not for their neighbors. 

When he saw the tops of the towers of the 
manor above the encircling trees, my Uncle 
John bit his mustache, and we did not hear 
his voice again until the carriage stopped in 
the court. As for Rosie, she talked for two, 
uttering little exclamations of pleasure at each 
remembered turn in the road, calling each 
peasant who rose from his bench to salute us 
by name ; full of admiration at the changes in 
the village. 

My father and mother seemed so happy at 
the arrival of the travelers that it would have 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 157 

been difficult to decide which of the three was 
received with the greatest tenderness. But 
during dinner the general attention was turned 
to me, and the conversation was almost entirely 
about my expedition to the East. My father 
approved it loudly ; he said that the desire to 
see the world and to learn by experience was 
most praiseworthy in a young man. My uncle, 
who scarcely listened, assented. Undoubtedly, 
his mind went back to his former travels, and 
mine must have seemed insignificant in com- 
parison. As for the only person who knew the 
real reason for my travels, she made bass-reliefs 
in bread-crumbs, carefully avoiding looking at 
me, to keep from laughing I suppose. 

Uncle John and Rosie, tired with their 
journey, went early to their rooms in the little 
tower, accompanied by the chatelaine. When 
we were alone, my father said to me : 

“Your cousin is superb. She has the eyes 
and eyebrows of an Italian, and the complex- 
ion of an English woman. How is it that you 
have never spoken of her?” 

“ Because my cousin hardly seems to me a 
woman. I always think of her as she was 
when her grandfather put her down on the 


158 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

sofa fast asleep on a certain winter’s evening. 
We are the best comrades in the world; but 
if she has the hair of an Italian, she has the 
matter-of-fact mind of an English woman.” 

“ Really,” said my father, “ it is astonish- 
ing ! She does not look like it. After all, it 
is happier for her, for it will not be easy to 
find a husband for her,” 

“ I do not think she will ever marry,” I said, 
with a serious air. “ I expect she will give us a 
second edition of Aunt Alexandrine.” 

“As she likes,” my father concluded; “only 
do not you give us a second Uncle John!” 

“Poor father!” I sighed, inwardly. “You 
do not suspect that your son is in love with 
an inaccessible fairy, and that Gaston de Van- 
delnay will probably be the last of his race.” 

The next morning I wandered about the 
park in the early freshness. As I approached 
a huge plane-tree, under which rustic benches 
invited to repose, I perceived a white figure 
in a dreamy attitude. 

“Well, Rosie, are you already regretting 
your museum and easel and Madonnas?” 

She turned her head toward me, and I saw 
that her eyes were filled with tears. 


MY COUSIN ; MISS CINDERELLA. 


159 


“ No,” she said, with her usual simplicity. 
“ No, but I regret being older than I was when 
we worked together in our little garden.” 

“ How absurd to have regrets ! At that 
time you were an ugly little girl, and now — ” 

“And now?” she repeated, looking at me 
as if she had not the faintest idea of what I 
was going to say. 

“ And now you are a remarakbly beautiful 
person.” 

She looked so astonished and incredulous 
that I hastened to give my authority. 

“ Certainly ; my father said so no longer ago 
than last night.” 

“ Ah ! ” she replied, modestly ; “ it is my 
uncle. He is really very good.” 

I had to agree myself that she was beauti- 
ful. In her badly made muslin morning-dress, 
which would have shocked a fashionable beau- 
ty, the perfect grace of her figure could not be 
concealed. Her face, with its classic features, 
shone with the light of youth. Her hands and 
feet were admirable. 

“ It is singular,” I thought, “ how much bet- 
ter one sees certain details when one is quiet. 
I might have spent twenty years in the whirl- 


l6o MY COUSIN, MISS CI NDERELLA . 


pool of Paris in the vicinity of this charming 
person without perceiving fee r charms.” 

The first week of our stay at Vandelnay was 
delightful. The neighborhood had not yet 
learned that there were guests in the château, 
and I begged my mother to prolong their ig- 
norance as much as possible. After so many 
years, it would not be easy for me to say what 
Rosie and I did. I only know that we were al- 
ways together, and that evening came before 
the day had seemed long. Of course we talked 
three fourths of the time of the lady of the pan- 
sies. Dear creature ! where could she be ? in 
the mountains, at the sea-shore ? or in some 
shady country-house with her husband and chil- 
dren — for after consultation, we had decided 
that she had children — made still more beauti- 
ful by the conflict between duty and her mys- 
terious tenderness. In three days, in two 
days, to-morrow, I should have the expected 
letter ! 

“Oh, Rosie, how I wish it was to-morrow!” 

At this wish, my cousin was silent, and for 
the first time I saw a shadow pass over her 
face, a shadow of annoyance, doubtless. But 
really, could I be angry with her, if the letter 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 161 

so ardently expected interested her less than 
me ? 

The post-man brought me no letter — or at 
least, not hers. It was the same the next day, 
the day after, and the following days for a 
week. 

Ah ! all the calm of the first days was past ! 
What did my parents, the park, my horses, 
matter to me? My compassionate cousin was 
the only one who could understand me, and, 
within a certain limit, console me. According 
to her, the delay which caused me such anxiety 
was the effect of some slight accident, and I had 
no reason to alarm myself. 

There had been some mistake about a jour- 
ney, some stay in a place off the traveled routes, 
some family duty — for up to that time my cor- 
respondent had faithfully kept her promises. 

“ And if she is ill or dead ? ” 

Until then, I had felt sure that I should one 
day know her. “ Must I renounce this joy for- 
ever? Pity me, Rosie, for I am most un- 
happy ! ” 

I understood then, for the first time, all the 
compassionate pity which there is in the heart 
of a woman, even at an age when her heart 

ii 


1 62 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

might have less melancholly thoughts. Patient 
as an Eastern slave accustomed to the caprices 
of her master — mine were not of a kind which 
even slightly resembled those of a pasha — my 
cousin left everything, if I but made her a sign, 
to talk with me — that is, to listen to my com- 
plaints. Sometimes she gently protested against 
my sadness. She often repeated : 

“ A human being has not the right to bemoan 
his destiny when he possesses the assurance of 
being faithfully and sincerely loved ! ” 

These unplatonic arguments touched me very 
little, for I wished to be acknowledged the most 
unhappy of men, even though I admitted that 
I was the most tenderly consoled. 

“ My poor Rosie,” I said, pressing her small 
hands in mine, “ if I could forget as she does, it 
would be for you that I should wish to do it.” 

“ I am sure that she thinks of you more than 
ever,” replied my cousin. “ I have a presenti- 
ment that in a few days everything will be ex- 
plained.” 

It was impossible to make her give up this 
assurance, which I was far from sharing with 
her. 

Whenever it was possible for me to put my 


MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. \ 63 

preoccupation aside, I immediately 'found in her 
the most charming, the gayest, the most amus- 
ing of companions. One day I could not re- 
frain from saying to her, with secret envy : 

“ Do you know, Rosie, that you seem to me 
to be a perfectly happy woman ? ” 

“ It is more than seeming,” she said, gravely. 
At the present moment, I am as happy as a 
woman can be. In three weeks grandfather has 
grown twenty years younger. My uncle and 
aunt treat me like a daughter. And you can 
not imagine what pleasure it gives me to see 
dear old Vandelnay.” 

“Very well; what hinders you and Uncle 
John from ending your lives here? You can 
be to me what Aunt Frederick was to our 
grandfather. And we will grow old together, 
as they did.” 

She closed her eyes, but the perspective 
seemed to please her very moderately, for she 
replied, nervously : 

“ I can not look forward to the future ; let 
me profit by the present.” 

It was easy to see that she enjoyed like a 
sybarite each hour passed among us. Every- 
thing delighted her; but she still more de- 


1 64 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 


lighted everybody. Four persons disputed 
from morning till evening as to which should 
have the pleasure of seeing her and having her 
to listen to their complaints and confidences. 

Uncle John’s rheumatism, my father’s gastric 
troubles, the administrative cares of my mother 
— always full of troubles with servants, with the 
poor, with asylums and good works — and, lastly, 
my heart-troubles — all came to her, and she was 
neither astonished nor overcome. 

When in our family talks Uncle John spoke 
of their return to Paris, there was a silence, as 
at the announcement of some catastrophe. 

When, by chance, Rosie had an hour to her- 
self, her happiness was to seat herself under the 
plane-tree where our garden had been, where 
she read some favorite book or wrote her let- 
ters. 

One day, toward the middle of an afternoon 
which was oppressively hot, I passed that way 
just as the first gusts of a coming storm were 
tearing the yellow leaves and small branches 
from the tree. 

“ Be quick, pick up your papers, pen, and 
ink,” I said to my cousin. “ Do you not hear 
the thunder? What are you thinking about ? ” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 165 

“ Of nothing-,” she said, startled, for she had 
been so absorbed that she had not noticed my 
approach. 

“Upon my word, Miss Cinderella is taking 
the airs of Mignon,” I said, laughingly. “ So 
you are getting to be a dreamer!” 

Before she could reply, a violent gust of 
wind threw down the portfolio on which she 
had been writing. In a second, twenty sheets 
of paper were scattered about among the dry 
branches of the plane-tree. 

We ran to the right and left in pursuit of the 
fugitives. 

A sheet rather larger than the others seemed 
to defy my efforts. It flew in front of me, skim- 
ming over the short grass, stopping, and begin- 
ning its course again at the moment when I was 
ready to seize it, only to fall to the ground far- 
ther on, like a wounded bird. 

It is my temperament to care most for the 
pursuit of difficult things, no matter what they 
are. I swore that this new kind of game should 
not escape me, and I managed to seize it, thanks 
to its mistake in getting entangled in the 
crooked branches of some low bushes. 

“ How foolish to take so much trouble,” I 


1 66 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

cried, seeing that my prize was only a sheet of 
ordinary blotting-paper. 

No, not so ordinary. In looking at it, I saw 
something which made me stop short in spite of 
the thunder and lightning and which made my 
cousin — a hundred feet off — cry out with terror. 

But I heard nothing, and saw only the leaf 
of pink paper, on which I read my fate. 

Very soon the heavy rain forced me to hurry 
to the chateau, not before having carefully 
folded my prize and placed it in the depths of 
my pocket. There was no one under the plane- 
tree ; Rosie had preceded me. I was glad of it. 
It suited me better to see her later, when my 
last doubts should have been dissipated, and 
when I should have listened to what an un- 
known voice whispered to my heart, overcome 
by surprise. 

The preliminary inquest was not long — the 
time to go up to my room, to open my secretary, 
and to take out the last letter of my lady of the 
pansies, to spread out the leaf I had just picked 
up, to compare the bouquet traced on the thick 
English paper, with that which was printed 
on the spongy surface of the blotting-paper. 
Twins could not have been more alike. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 167 

“ Idiot, blind fool, selfish ! My dearly loved 
Rosie ! My beautiful, my loving, my proud 
Rosie! Too proud, poor child! Distrustful, 
above all ; but could I blame her for being dis- 
trustful ? Alas ! I had taken care to show my- 
self to her under a light little calculated to give 
her faith.” 

I laughed and wept as I uttered these inco- 
herent words. I went over, one after another, a 
hundred remembrances of the last days. 

How much I had made her suffer since the 
eyes of the orphan had first seen me on the 
threshold of the old house with its severe hos- 
pitality ! How, in my stupid vanity, I had tort- 
ured her! 

Courageously, obstinately, this adorable girl, 
whose beauty even I had not appreciated, had 
kept her despised tenderness for me. Without 
a complaint, she had concealed her jealousy and 
accepted my confidences. 

Poor, she had seen me throw away my 
fortune upon my own caprices and those of 
others. Sublime with sacrifice, with ideal pas- 
sion, she had pretended to laugh at my mockery 
of her humdrum spirit. And I— I ! had given 
her a ridiculous name ! 


1 68 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

The chill of my wet clothes recalled me to 
real life. 

Now, I had no right to expose myself to be- 
ing ill — my life belonged to another. 

“ Good heavens ! ” I exclaimed, as I hurried 
into dry clothes, “ how many days of happiness, 
alas, have been lost ! ” 


XVIII. 


It was not until dinner-time that I saw my 
cousin again. She had been obliged to change 
her dress, and as her wardrobe was limited, the 
dear child was in full dress. Beautiful enough 
to turn the head of a king, she looked at me as 
she always did, with humble looks of love — which 
the object of it was supposed to ignore — to see if 
the master of her heart was pleased. 

I turned away my eyes. They would have 
told her all, and for the moment I wished to be 
silent. No, not before witnesses — the first blush, 
the first joy of her sweet success must be for me 
alone. She must wait another hour. My dar- 
ling ! how long she had waited without hope ! 

Like all people with his disease, my father 
ate little and it was hard for him to see others 
eat. 

I did not make him suffer much that day. 


I jo MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

Saying nothing, I watched my cousin, or, to 
speak more exactly, I devoured her with my 
eyes, discovering treasures of charm and grace 
in the smallest movement of her hands, in her 
simplest attitudes. For two hours I had loved 
her with my whole mind and strength, but what 
I experienced was not in the least like the “love 
at first sight” described by novelists. During 
long years my happy destiny had slowly, pa- 
tiently, prepared my heart for this moment. A 
gleam of light had come. Now the flame of 
true love burned brightly, never to go out. 

When the repast was over I said to my 
cousin: “Let us go and see if the storm has 
done much harm to the trees of the park.” 

Ah ! never to be forgotten evening ! The sky 
was perfectly clear again, and there were only 
here and there some drops shining on the leaves, 
refreshed by the beneficent rain. The air was 
full of the odor of sap, a perfume of flowers 
awakened from their lethargy, and happy to re- 
vive. The entire park seemed an immense hall, 
decorated with fresh verdure for some great re- 
joicing for which the first stars began the illu- 
mination. I offered my arm to my companion, 
a gallantry to which she was little accustomed. 


MY COUSIN , ; MISS CINDERELLA. iyi 

She took it without looking at me, nervous 
with a sort of vague presentiment, and we 
walked slowly in the direction of the famous 
plane-tree. It was there that I wanted to open 
my heart to her. 

When we were under the big tree, I said to 
Rosie, not allowing her to sit down : 

“ I have found out why my lady of the pan- 
sies does not write to me any more.” 

“ Really,” she said, curious to know what 
false light I was following now, for she did not 
yet guess. “ Why ? ” 

“ Because her letters, would bear the posf- 
mark of Vandelnay. Do you understand, Ro- 
sie ? ” 

She trembled, and bit her lips. Evidently, 
she was trying to think of some means of pro- 
longing my error, but I resumed, putting my 
arm about her waist, which made her tremble 
violently. 

“ She will write no more, never more, Rosie ! 
My darling, tell me with your lips what your 
pen has told me. For my lady of the pansies, 
I am sure of it, is here on my heart ! ” 

Without hesitating, in a low voice, she said 
the dear words, and the birds in the thick 


1 72 MY COUSIN , MISS CINDERELLA. 

branches over our heads seemed to be silent to 
listen. 

“ Is it really true ?” I asked in a moment. 
‘‘You have written me so much that was 
false ! ” 

“Never a word! I have always told you 
the truth.” 

“ What can you mean ? And the aristocratic 
salon where we have met, for instance?” 

“ Is not that true of Vandelnay ? ” 

“ But the mysterious and jealous being to 
whom you belonged, and the duties which 
bound you ? I supposed you were irrevocably 
married, and mother of a family — and you 
helped me to believe it.” 

“ Is not my grandfather more than husband 
or children — this old man of eighty years, who 
has only me in the world, who has devoted his 
life to me, and to whom I owe everything ? ” 

“ And this fear of showing yourself to me ? 
Would you really have had the courage to live 
and die without telling me your secret ? ” 

“ At first I thought I could, but lately I 
have wavered. I would have told you when I 
was an old woman.” 

“ And why so, I beg ? ” 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 173 

“ Because I am very distrustful by nature, 
and certainly your confidences were not reassur- 
ing ; because I thought you incapable of under- 
standing me ; because you did not take the 
trouble to look at me. And, last of all — 
she lowered her voice — because I am very 
proud.” 

“ Rosie,” I replied, “you must be completely 
generous. Do me the kindness to forget all 
these miserable reasons. At the bottom of 
my heart — I swear — I have never loved but 
you.” 

“ At the bottom ! ” she sighed, concealing her 
eyes, in which the bright drops stood, on my 
breast. “ Ah ! yes, deep down, then ! For if I 
could judge by the surface — ” 

“ I adore you. There is no other woman in 
the world for me. Besides, you know whether 
I have been faithful.” 

“ For three months ! A great thing ! ” 

“Yes, but without knowing you. Now I 
know you. Y ou have every quality — heart, soul, 
devotion, tenderness — ” 

“ Are you not ashamed ? Do you remember 
the name you gave me?” 

“ Hush ! I had not read your letters, then. 


174 MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA . 

And besides, Rosie, you are so beautiful ! I ad- 
mire you as much as I love you. What happi- 
ness that my lady of the pansies is no other than 
you ! ” 

A pressure of her little hand emphasized 
these words, as much as to say that she also 
was happy, the dear, loving creature. 

We remained during long minutes silent. 
Suddenly she started from the arms which held 
her gently imprisoned. 

“ But who can have told you my secret ? ” 
she cried, knitting her brows. “No human be- 
ing knows it.” 

“ Come,” I said. “ The air is damp. As we 
go you shall hear the story.” 

When I had finished my short history of my 
pursuit after the leaf of blottingrpaper carried 
away by the wind, she said, in a voice which was 
at once gentle and profound: 

“ How good God is ! ” 

“ Yes, there are days when he is good, others 
when he seems cruel ! ” 

We had reached the steps of the house, when 
I perceived^ that we had forgotten something 
very important, like foolish architects who build 
the house forgetting the staircase. 


MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. i;$ 

“ Rosie,” I said, “ we will go and announce 
the great news to them.” 

One of her traits of character was to disguise 
easily her deep emotions. She asked, with a 
careless air: 

“ What great news ? ” 

“ That you have promised to be my 
wife.” 

She no longer feigned indifference. She 
took my hands, and looking me full in the face, 
“ My dear,” she said, “ I belong to you. Speak 
as you will, and when you will. Grandfather 
will be very happy, for I am sure that he too 
has had his secret.” 

My father put down his newspaper when he 
saw us come in. My mother was writing ; my 
Uncle John had retired to the little tower as he 
was in the habit of doing. He went early to 
bed. 

“Well,” asked my father, “has the storm 
done much damage to my trees?” 

“ Not much,” I said ; “ but if it had even up- 
rooted the plane-tree, we ought still to be grate- 
ful to it.” 

My parents looked at me astonished at my 
emotion. 


iy6 my cousin , ; miss Cinderella. 

“ Will you have this dear child for your 
daughter? ” 

We all embraced each other, during I do not 
know how many minutes, without being able to 
speak, so that when we recovered our voices 
there was nothing more to say. 

From henceforth the orphan was at home in 
the house where she was to grow old, but 
differently from Aunt Frederick and Aunt 
Alexandrine. 

When my father and his happy son were 
alone : 

“You pretended, the other day,” he said, 
“ that your cousin was hardly a woman for you. 
It seems to me that the change has been rather 
sudden, and, as I think of it, everybody seems to 
have been rather precipitate, even the reason- 
able people. But this little fairy has turned my 
head too, and I did not reflect — and you are so 
young.” 

I interrupted this retrospective prudence to 
tell my father the story of Miss Cinderella, and 
of my lady of the pansies. 

“ My son,” he said, getting up — for it was 
late — “ I only desire one thing ; it is that you 
may do for your wife as much as she has done 


MY COUSIN, \ MISS CINDERELLA. iyy 

for you. I can hardly wait for to-morrow morn- 
ing to go and talk of this affair with my Uncle 
John.” 

In the morning, when I was going to throw 
myself on my Uncle John’s neck to thank him 
for his favorable answer, he threw on me a look 
almost of fear, which carried me back thirteen 
years. For it was with such timid, supplica- 
ting eyes that he had looked at my grandmother 
on the evening when he begged to have the 
fatherless, motherless child received at Van- 
delnay. 

“ Are you sure you love her very much,” he 
asked me. “You must never deceive her. You 
do not realize what an immense love my Rosie 
has for you ! I guessed it long ago, and I have 
suffered for her. Even now I am frightened ; 
she has such a deep tenderness for you ! You 
hold her life in your hand — and mine, too, so 
long as I am here.” 

I kneeled before my cousin and kissed her 
hand as I made my reply, which seemed to con- 
tent my uncle : 

“ Uncle John, you may be perfectly happy.” 

'Lisbeth went back alone to the Rue d’Assas 

to give up the apartment. Then she returned 
12 


lyS MY COUSIN, MISS CINDERELLA. 

for the marriage of her young mistress. Two 
months later she married the gardener, as I have 
already said — remarkable person as he was. 


When I shall be no more, my son will find 
these pages, which will show him how much I 
loved the mother whom he knew for so short a 
time — with whom, as I have written, I have 
seemed to live our happy days over again. 
For — she did not grow old at Vandelnay ! 

In our projects, in our happiness, in the for- 
getfulness of the outer world, which the union 
of our lives brought us, it did not occur to us 
that death could accomplish the terrible work 
he did — to take this loving creature — 

How many times I have been forced to put 
down my pen as I remembered those smiles, 
those joys! The dear absent one has seen it. 
She knows how much I loved her, how often I 
weep for her when I am alone, what thought 
never leaves me, when the living think that my 
mind, as well as my body, is among them. 
And so that the precious remembrance may 


MY COUSIN \ MISS CINDERELLA . iyg 

remain after we shall be united, I have piously 
set it down in these pages, as one preserves 
under gold and crystal from the least destruct- 
ive breath of wind, the flower which tells of 
short moments of joy, forever past. 


THE END. 


i. 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION 

Published by D. JPPLEPON & CO. 


EDMOND ABOUT. 
Story of an Honest Man. 
8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


GRACE AGUILAR. 

Home Influence. Woman's Friendship. 

The Mother's Recompense. The Women of Israel. 

The Days of Bruce. The Vale of Cedars. 

Home Scenes and Heart Studies. 

Each volume illustrated. Complete set, 7 vols., i2mo, in box, cloth, $7.00; 
or, separately, $1.00 each. 


GRANT ALLEN. 

Babylon. I For Maimie's Sake. 

i2mo, paper, 50 cents. | i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


F. ANSTEY. 


Vice Versa. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
The Giant's Robe. Illustrated. 
i6mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 


The Tinted Venus. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 

The Black Poodle y and other Stories. 
Illustrated. 

i2mo, paper, 50 cents. 


BERTHOLD AUERBACH. 
The Foresters. 
i8mo, paper, 50 cents. 


EDWARD BELLAMY. 
Dr. Heidenhojf's Process. 
i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 


WALTER BESANT and JAMES 
RICE. 

Seamy Side. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


D. BIKELAS. 
Loukis Laras. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents. 


RHODA BROUGHTON. 


Cometh Up as a Flower. 

Not Wisely , but Too Well. 
Nancy. 

Good-bye , Sweetheart ! 

Red as a Rose is She. 

8vo, paper, 30 cents each ; 
cloth, $1.00 each. 


i2mo, 


Joan. 

8vo, paper, 30 cents. 

Belinda . 

i2mo, cloth, $1.00. 

Second Thoughts. 

i8mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, 75 
cents. 


Master of the Mine. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


ROBERT BUCHANAN. 

I Matt. 

1 i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 
The Shadow of the Sword. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


OLIVER B. BUNCE. [ MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. 

The Adventures of Timias Terrystone. I Don Quixote de la Mancha. Illus. 
i6mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. | 8vo, cloth, $2.00. 

( 1 ) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION ( continued ). 


VICTOR CHERBULIEZ. 


Samuel Brohl and Company. 

Meta Holdenis. 

Jean Tderols Idea. 

i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; do., 60 cents. 


A Stroke of Diplomacy. 
i8mo, 20 cents. 

Saints and Sinners (Noirs et Rouges). 
8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


Marquis and Merchant. 
8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


MORTIMER COLLINS. 

I Two Plunges for a Pearl. 
I 8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


WILKIE COLLINS. 


A Rogue's Life. [ The Yellow Mask. 

i8mo, paper, 25 cents ; clo., 60 cents. | i8mo, paper, 25 cents ; do., 60 cents. 


JOHN ESTEN COOKE. 

The Virginia Comedians. I Doctor Vandyke. 

i6mo, cloth, $1.25. I 8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 

The Maurice Mystery. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. 


Darley Edition. Illustrated with Steel 1 
Plates from Drawings by Darley. 
32 volumes, crown 8vo, cloth, extra, 
gilt top, uncut leaves, $72.00 per set ; 
half calf, $144.00 ; half morocco, gilt 
top, $150.00. 


Illustrated Edition. With 64 En- 
gravings from Drawings by F. O. C. 
Darley. 

Complete in 16 volumes. Price, for 
the complete set, in cloth, $20.00 ; 
half calf or half morocco, $43.00. 


Library 

The Spy. 

The Pilot. 

The Red Rover. 

The Deerslayer. 

The Pathfinder. 

The Last of the Mohicans. 

The Pioneers. 

The Prairie. 

Lionel Lincoln. 

Wept of Wish-ton- Wish. 

The Water- Witch. 

The Bravo. 

Mercedes of Castile. 

The Two Admirals. 

Afloat and Ashore. 

Miles Wallingford. 

Complete in 32 vols., 

Cooper's Leather-Stocking Tales. The 
Last of the Mohicans. — The Deer- 
slayer.— -The Pathfinder.— The Pio- 
neers. — The Prairie, 
irnno edition. 5 vols., cloth, $5.00. 
Octavo edition. 40 Illustrations by 
Darley. Paper, 75 cents each. 5 
vols, in one, cloth, $2.00. 


Edition. 

Wing-and- Wing. 

Oak Openings. 

Satanstoe. 

The Chain-Bearer. 

The Red-Skins. 

The Crater. 

Homeward Bound. 

Home as Found. 

Heiden mautr. 

The Headsman. 

Jack Tier. 

The Sea- Lions. 

Wyandotte. 

The Manikins. 

Precaution. 

Ways of the Hour. 
i2mo, per vol., $i.co. 

Cooper's Sea Tales. The Pilot. — The 
Red Rover. — The Water-Witch. — 
Wing-and-Wing.— The Two Ad- 
mirals. 

i2mo edition. 5 vols., doth, $5.00. 
Octavo edition. 40 Illustrations by 
Darley. Paper, 75 cents each. 5 
vols, in one, cloth, $2.00. 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION ( continued ). 


F. MARION CRAWFORD and Others. 


The Broken Shaft. Tales in Mid- j 
Ocean. Told by F. Marion Craw- ; 
ford, R. Louis Stevenson, F. | 


DANIEL DEFOE. 

Life and Adventures of Robinson 
Crusoe. Illustrated. 

8vo, cloth, $2.00. 


Anstey, W. H. Pollock, Will- 
iam Archer, and others. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


J. W. DE FOREST, 

Author of “ The Wetherel Affair.” 
The Oddest of Courtships. 
i6mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 


COMTE DE GOBINEAU. 

Romances of the East. 
i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 

JAMES DE MILLE. 

The Lady of the Lee. Illustrated. , An Open Question. Illustrated. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. | 8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 


CHARLES 

Household Edition. Complete in 
22 vols. , sq. 8vo, containing nearly 
900 Illustrations. 

Paper, $22.50; or in 10 vols., cloth, 
$30.00. 

Cheap Popular Ed 

Pickwick Papers. 

Nicholas Nickleby. 

Martin Chuzzlewit . 

Dombey and Son. 

David Copperfield. 

Bleak House. 

Little Dorrit. 

Uncommercial Traveller. 

Our Mutual Friend. 

12 mo, paper, 35 cents each. 

Old Curiosity Shop. 

Barnaby Rudge. 

i2mo, paper, 30 cents each. 

Above in 6 vols 


DICKENS. 

Handy-Volume Edition. Illustrated. 
Complete in 14* vols. 
i2mo, cloth, 75 cents each ; or in box, 
$10.50. 

[TION, in 19 volumes. 

Sketches. 

Oliver Twist. 

Hard Times. 

Great Expectations. 

Christmas Stories. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents each. 

Tale of Two Cities. 

The Mystery of Edwin Drood. 

i2mo, paper, 20 cents each. 
American Notes. 

i2mo, paper, 15 cents. 


., cloth, $10.00. 


BENJAMIN DISRAELI (Earl of Beaconsfield). 


Endymion. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.00 and $1.50; 8vo, 
paper, 75 cents. 

Vivian Grey. 

Coningsby. 

8vo, paper, 60 cents each. 

Lothair. 

i2mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 


The You fig Duke. 
Contarini Fleming. 
Miriam Alroy. 

LLenrietta Temple. 

Venetia. 

Tancred. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents each. 


Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 


Jet. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents. 


I Vivian the Beauty. 

I iSmo, paper, 30 cents ; clo. , 60 cents, 

( 3 ) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION ( continued ). 


FRANCES ELLIOT. 

Romance of Old Court Life in France. The Italians. 

Illustrated. i2rao, cloth, $1.50. 

8vo, paper, $1.50 ; cloth, $2.00. 


S. B. ELLIOTT. 

The Felmeres. 

i2mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.50. 


Brigadier Frederick . 
8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 

I Strange Stories. 

I i8mo, paper, 30 cents. 


CARL EMIL FRANZOS. 

The Jews of Barnozv. 
i6mo, cloth, $1.00. 

ARCHBISHOP FENELON. 
Adventures of Telemachus. Illustrated. 
8vo, cloth, $2.00 ; half calf, $4.00. 


GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. 


Double Cunning. 

i2mo, paper, 50 cents. 


I The Dark House. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


OCTAVE FEUILLET. 

Aliette (La Morte). The Diary of a Woman. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents ; half bound, i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 
75 cents. 


J. W. FORNEY. 

The New Nobility. 
i2mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.50. 


R. E. FRANCILLON. 
Rare Good Luck. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


GUSTAV FREYTAG. 


THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 


The Lost Manuscript. Spirite. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth-, 60 cts. 


THEODOR GERSTACKER. 
How a Bride was Won. Illustrated. 
8vo, paper, $1.00 ; cloth, $1.50. 


The Vicar of Wakefield. 
Illustrated. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.00. 


OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The Vicar of Wakefield. (Parchment 
Series. ) 

i6mo, antique, gilt top, $1.25. 


HENRY GREVILLE. 
Ariadne. 

i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cts. 


( 4 ) 


GUSTAVE HALLER. 

Renee and Franz (Le Bleuet ). 
iômo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cts. 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION {continued). 


H. R. HAGGARD. 
The Witch's Head. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


MYRA SAWYER HAMLIN. 
A Politician's Daughter. 
i2mo, half bound, 75 cents. 


Lai. 

Doctor Grattan. 

Mr. Oldmixon. 

A Strong-minded Woman. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.50 each. 


WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D. 

Tales of Eccentric Life. By William 
A. Hammond and his Daughter, 
Clara Lanza. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


Bressant. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
Garth. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 


JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 

Sebastian Strome. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. 
Noble Blood. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents. 


Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds. 
i6mo, paper, 25 cents. 


In Paradise. 

2 vols., i6mo, paper, $1.20; clo., $2. 


PAUL HEYSE. 
I Tales. 


WILHELMINE VON HILLERN. 
Geier- Wally. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cts. 
A. R. HOPE. 

Homespun Stories. Illustrated. 
i6mo, cloth, $1.25. 


VICTOR 

The Man who Laughs. 

8vo, paper, $1.00 ; cloth, $1.50. 

II Homme Qui Rit. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


HUGO. 

La Mer et la Nuit. Première Partie. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents. 

Par Ordre du Roi. Seconde Partie. 
8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


EDWARD JENKINS. 
The Secret of her Life. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


JULIA KAVANAGH. 


Adele. 
Beatrice. 
Daisy Burns. 
Grace Lee. 
Madeline. 
Nathalie. 


Rachel Grey. 

Seven Years and other Stories. 
Sybil's Second Love. 

Queen Mab. 

John Dor rien. 

The Two Lilies. 


i2mo, cloth, $1.25 each, or 12 volumes in a box, $15.00. 


Dora. Illustrated. 

8vo, paper, $1.00; cloth, $1.50. 


Silvia. 

I 8vo, paper, 75 cents. 
Bessie. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


HENRY F. KEENAN. 
The Aliens. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 


NATHAN C. KOUNS. 
Arius the Libyan. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

( 5 ) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION {continued). 


J. SHERIDAN LE FANU, 
Author of “ Uncle Silas.” 
The Bird of Passage. 
i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 


LE SAGE. 

Adventures of Gil Bias . Illustrated. 
8vo, doth, $2.00. 


RUDOLPH LINDAU. 

Gordon Baldwin , and The Philosopher's Pendulum. 
i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 

Liquidated , and The Seer. 
i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 


ETHEL LYNN LINTON. 
Misericordia. 

i8mo, paper, 20 cents. 


PRINCE LUBOMIRSKI. 

Safar-Hadgi. 

i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, Co cts. 


EDNA LYALL. 

Donovan. \ We Two. 

Won by Waiting. 
iemo, cloth, $1.50 each. 


MARIA J. MCINTOSH. 


Aunt Kitty's Tales. 

Charms and Counter-Charms. 
Two Pictures. 


Evenings at Donaldson Manor. 
Two Lives. 

The Lofty and Lowly. 


6 volumes, i2mo, cloth, $1.00 each, or per set in box, cloth, $6.00. 


KATHARINE S. MACQUOID. 


The Fisherman of Auge. 
i8mo, paper, 20 cents. 


My Story. 

8vo, paper, $1.00. 


Colonel En derby's Wife. 
i2mo, paper, 50 cents. 


LUCAS MALET. 

I Mrs. Lorimer. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 


CAPTAIN 

Peter Simple. 

Jacob Faithful. 

Naval Officer. 

King's Own. 

Japhet in Search of a Father. 
Newton Forster. 


MARRY AT, R. N. 

Midshipman Easy. 
Pacha of Many Tales. 
The Phantom Ship. 
Snarleyoiv. 

Percival Keene. 


i2mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25 ; or, per set in box, cloth, $15.00. 


FLORENCE MARRYAT. 

The Poison of Asps. I No Intentions. 

8vo, paper, 30 cents. | 8vo, paper, 75 cents. 

My Own Child. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


Cherry Ripe. 

8vo, paper, 30 cents. 


HELEN B. MATHERS. 

I Cornin' thro' the Rye. 
I 8vo, paper, 30 cents. 
( 6 ) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION (continued). 


G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE. 


Good /or Nothing. 
Sarchedon. 

The Gladiators. 

8vo, paper, 60 cents each. 


Cerise. 

The Brookes of Bridlemere. 
White Rose. 

Uncle Jolm. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.25 each. 


LOUISA MÜHLBACH. 


Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia. 
Illustrated. 

The Empress Josephme. Illustrated. 

Napoleon and Blucher. Illustrated. 

Queen II or tense. Illustrated. 

Marie Antoinette and her Son. Illus- 
trated. 

Prince Eugene and his Times. Illus- 
trated. 

The Daughter of an Empress. Illus- 
trated. 

Joseph II and his Court. Illustrated. 

Frederick the Great and his Court. Il- 
lustrated. 


Frederick the Great and his Family. 
Illustrated. 

Berlin and Sans-Souci. Illustrated. 

Goethe and Schiller. Illustrated. 

Merchant of Berlin , and Maria The- 
resa and her Fireman. 

Louisa of Prussia and her Times. Il- 
lustrated. 

Old Fritz and the New Era. Illus- 
trated. 

Andreas Hofer. Illustrated. 

Mohammed Ali and his House. Illus- 
trated. 

Henry VIII and Catherine Parr. 111 . 


8vo, each volume, cloth, $1.00 ; or bound complete in 6 volumes, 
sold by set only, $12.00. 


MRS. OLIPHANT. 
The Three Brothers. 

8vo, paper, $1.00. 


JAMES PAYN. 

Fallen Fortunes. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


EDMUND PENDLETON. 

A Conventional Bohemian. 
iamo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 


ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. 


Allan Dare and Robert le Diable. Il- 
lustrated. 

2 volumes, 8vo, paper, $2 ; cloth, $3. 


Adventures of Harry Marline. Illus- 
trated. 

8vo, paper, $1.00 ; cloth, $1.50, 


BARNET PHILLIPS. 

A Struggle. 

i6mo, paper, 25 cents. 


JANE PORTER. 

The Scottish Chiefs. Illustrated. 
8vo, cloth, $2.50» 


GEORGE L. RAYMOND. 
Modern Fishers of Men. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


CHARLES READE. 

Peg Woffington. I Christie Johnstone. 

iSmo, paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 60 cts. | i8mo, paper, 30 cents. 

(V) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION {continued). 


CHRISTIAN REID. 

Valerie Aylmer. Nina's Atonement, and other Stories. 

Morton House. A Daughter of Bohemia. 

Mabel Lee. Bonny Kate. 

Ebb-Tide. After Many Days. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents each ; cloth, $1.25 each. 


The Land of the Sky. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 
Hearts and Hands. 

A Gentle Belle. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents each. 

A Question of Honor. 


Heart of Steel. 

Roslyn's Fortune. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.25 each. 

A Summer Idyl. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents; cloth, 60 
cents. 


MADAME C. REYBAUD. 


I'ke Goldsmith's Wife. 

Uncle César. 

i8rao, paper, 25 cents each. 


A Thorough Bohémienne. 
i8mo, paper, 30 cents; 
cents. 


cloth, 60 


GEORGE SAND. 

The Tower of Percemont. 
i6mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 


WALTER SCOTT. 


Black’s Library Edition. 

25 volumes, 8vo, half calf, $125.00. 


Cheap Popular 

Waver ley. 

Ivanhoe. 

Kenilworth. 

Guy Mannering. 

Antiquary. 

Rob Roy. 

Old Mortality. 

The Black Dwarf and A 
Montrose. 

Bride of Lammermoor. 

Heart of Mid-Lothian. 

The Monastery. 

The Abbot. 


Waverley Novels. Complete in 6 
vols. Illustrated. Per set, cloth, 
$10 ; sheep, $15 ; half calf, $20. 

Edition, in 25 volumes. 

The Pirate. 

Fortunes of Nigel. 

Peveril of the Peak. 

Quentin Durward. 

St. Ronan's Well. 

Redgauntlet. 

The Betrothed, and Highland. Widow. 
The Talisman. 

Woodstock. 

Fair Malti of Perth. 

Anne of Geierstein. 

Count Robert of Paris. 

The Surgeon's Daughter. 


Legend of 


Paper, 25 cents each. 


Amy Herbert. 

Cleve Hall. 

The Earl's Daughter. 
Experience of Life. 
Gertrude. 


ELIZABETH M. SEWELL. 

Ivors. A Story of English Country Life. 
Katharine Ashton. 

Margaret Percival. 

Ursula. 

Laneton Parsonage. 


i2mo, cloth, $1.00 each ; per set in box, $10.00. 
( 8 ) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION {continued). 


HAWLEY SMART. 

Breezie Langton. I A Race for a Wife. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. | 8vo, paper, 50 cents. 

Struck Down. 
i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 


ÉMILE SOUVESTRE. 

An Attic Philosopher in Paris. I Un Philosophe sous les Toits. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 60 cts. | i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; hf. bd., 65 cts. 


FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN. 
Lady Clara de Vere. 
i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 


HESBA STRETTON. 

The Doctor's Dilemma. Illustrated. 
8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


JULIAN STURGIS. 


John Maidment. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents. 

An Accomplished Gentleman. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 


John-a-Dreams. 

Little Comedies. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents each. 


LAURENCE ALMA TADEMA. 
Love's Martyr. 
i2mo, paper, 50 cents. 


ANDRÉ THEURIET. 


Gérard s Marriage. 

The Godson of a Marquis. 

Young Maugars. 

i6mo, paper, 25 cents each ; cloth, 60 
cents each. 

Raymonde. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents. 


All Alone. 

i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 
Antoinette. 

The House of the Two Barbels. 
i8mo, paper, 20 cents each. 


W. T. THOMPSON. 


KAMBA THORPE. 


Major Jones's Courtship. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 


Illustrated. 


The Little Joanna. 
8vo, paper, 60 cents. 


FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE. 
Black Spirits and White. Illustrated. I Mrs. Jack. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents. | i8mo, paper, 20 cents. 


LOUIS ULBACH. 

Madame Gosselin. 

i6rao, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 60 cts. 


JUAN VALERA. 

Pépita Ximenez. 

12010, paper, 50 cents ; hf. bd., 75 cts. 


FREDERICK B. VAN VORST. 
Without a Compass. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

( 9 ) 


NEW AND STANDARD FICTION {continued}. 


FLORENCE WARDEN. 


The House on the Marsh. 

At the World's Mercy. 

Deldee . 

i2mo, paper, 


Doris's Fortune. 

A Vagrant Wife. 

A Prince of Darkness. 
25 cents each. 


EDMUND YATES. 

A Waiting Race. 
8vo, paper, 75 cents. 


CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 


Heir of Redclyffe. 

The Daisy Chain. 

The Trial. 

Dynevor Terrace. 

Heartsease. 

Hopes and Fears. 

The Three Brides. 

Young Stepmother. 

The Caged Lion. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.25 each. 

The Clever Woman of the Family. 111 . 
8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 

*** A selection of 12 vols., 


The Chaplet of Pearls . Illustrated. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
Dove in the Eagle's Nest. 

Kenneth. 

The Two Guardians. 

Beechcroft. 

The Castle Builders. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.00 each. 

Ben Sylvester's Word. 

x8mo, cloth, 60 cents. 

The Disturbing Element. 
iSmo, paper, 30 cents. 
i2mo, per set in box, $12.00. 


HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE. 
The Dead Guest . Illustrated. 
8vo, paper, 50 cents. 


ANONYMOUS. 


Addie's Husband. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 

Ahnost Faultless. 

8vo, paper, 60 cents. 

An American Girl. 
i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

Arabian Nights Entertainments. 111 . 

8vo, cloth, $2.50 ; half calf, $4.50. 
Arab Wife. 

i8mo, paper, 25 cents. 

Brockley Moor. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 

Crime of Christmas-Day. 

i2mo, paper, 25 cents. 

Jacob Schuyler's Millions. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents. 

James Gordon's Wife. 

8vo, paper, 25 cents. 

Lady Alice. 

8vo, paper, 60 cents. 

Woman ( 
8vo, papi 


Lascine. 

i2mo, cloth, $1.50. 

Mademoiselle Fifty Millions. 

8vo, paper, 60 cents. 

Mrs. Limber's Raffle. 

i2mo, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cts f 
Money-Makers. 

i6mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. 
My Heroine. 

8vo, paper, 50 cents. 

“ My Queen.” 

iSmo, paper, 25 cents. 

Poverina. 

i8mo, paper, 30 cents. 

Righted at Last. 

8vo, paper, 75 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
Two Russian Idyls. 

iSmo, paper, 30 cents. 

Vera. 

8vo, paper, 40 cents. 

' Business. 

•, 75 cents. 


New York : D. APPLE 7 ON & CO,, Publishers, /, 3, & 5 Bond St, 

m 


D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 


THE DEEMSTER. A ROMANCE. By Hall Caine, author of 
“ The Shadow of a Crime,” etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents ; half 
bound, 75 cents. 

“The spiritual grandeur of its conception and the tremendous nature of the 
forces engaged raise it to the region of tragic drama. . . . Grandly conceived 
and grandly executed.” — London Academy. 

“ It is a marvelous study ... by the creative power of genius.”— Literary 
World, London. 

“•Fascinates the mind like the gathering and bursting of a storm.”— Illus- 
trated London News. 

AN UNLAID GHOST. A STUDY IN METEMPSYCHOSIS. By 
an American Author. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; half bound, 75 
cents. 

“It would not be fair to the readers to outline the strange denotement of 
this tale, or to prompt his attention to the identity of the spirit in the two parts 
of the romance. So subtile, yet unmistakable, is the suggestion of identity that it 
is startling. The exquisite language, the poetic power of description, enchant 
the reader, and the novel is one which will make one of the greatest successes 
of the day.”— .Boston Traveller. 

THE CASE OF MOHAMMED BENANI. A STORY OF TO- 
DAY. 12mo. Paper cover, 50 cents ; half bound, 75 cents. 

This novel is based upon certain exciting events that occurred in Morocco 
during the past year. The author is an American gentleman residing in Tan- 
gier, who lately came to Washington to expose the cruelties existing in Morocco 
under the protection of the American flag. The political events of the narrative 
are secondary to the incidents of the story, while for the novelist’s purpose 
Russia and Russian personages take the place of the United States and Wash- 
ington officials. 

“The story is well told, and keeps the attention fixed throughout. It passes 
backward and forward, from Africa to Russia, and deals now with actual person- 
ages, now with creations of fancy.”— The Athenaeum. 

THROUGH GREEN GLASSES: ANDY MERRIG AN’S GREAT 
DISCOVERY AND OTHER IRISH TALES. By F. M. Allen. 
With Illustrations by M. Fitzgerald. 12mo. Paper cover, 50 
cents; half bound, 75 cents. 

“The book is full of drollery, laughter is rippling over every page .”— London 
Spectator. 

“Deliciously humorous sketches.”— Whitehall Review. 

“ The funniest book of the year ."—St. Stephen's Review. 

ONE MAID’S MISCHIEF. By George Mantille Fenn, author 
of “ The Story of Antony Grace,” “ The Master of the Ceremonies,” 
etc. 12mo. Paper, 30 cents. 

Mr. Fenn has produced many excellent novels, hut none more pleasant and 
enjoyable than this. 


New York: D. APPLETON & C0-, 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 


D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS. 


A VIRGINIA INHERITANCE. By Edmund Pendleton, author 
of “A Conventional Bohemian.” 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, 
$ 1 . 00 . 


‘“A Virginia Inheritance’ will easily take rank among the best novels that 
have appeared this year, both for the remarkable interest and artistically skillful 
development of the story, and for the brilliancy and originality of its character- 
sketching.”— Boston Home Journal. 


A NYMPH OF THE WEST. By Howard Seely. 12mo. Paper, 

50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. 

“In his ‘Nymph of the West’ Mr. Howard Seely has presented a lively and 
picturesque, if somewhat highly colored, study of life on the ranch and the range 
in western Texas, which region, as well as with the habits of its people, he ap- 
pears to be unusually familiar. Cynthia Dallas, the heroine, is a fresh and 
original conception— a frank, high-minded girl, with enough of the innocent co- 
quetry of her sex to make her almost irresistible.”— The Sun (New York). 


A DEBUTANTE IN NEW YORK SOCIETY. HER ILLU- 
SIONS, AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM. By Rachel Buchanan. 
12mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

“ There is a keenness of social satire, an intimate acquaintance with New 
York society, and an abundance of wit, which combine to make the book un- 
usually attractive .” — Boston Courier. 

“It seems to be the work of a lady who has witnessed what she chronicles. 
She makes her report on the actualities and illusions of New York society with- 
out a particle of sarcasm or ill-feeling.”— Journal of Commerce. 


NINETTE: An Idyll of Provence. By the author of “Véra.” 

12mo. Paper, 50 cents; half bound, 75 cents. 

“The tale in itself is true to nature and tenderly pathetic.”— London Post. 
“This is a particularly well-told story.”— London Globe. 

A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION. By Lucas Malet, author of 
“ Mrs. Lorimer,” “ Colonel Enderby’s Wife,” etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 
cents ; half bound, 75 cents. 

“ It would require us to go back to Miss Austen to find anything that better 
deserved the praise of fine form, fine grouping, fine coloring, humorous delinea- 
tion, and precision of design.”— London Spectator. 

THE ELECT LADY. By George MacDonald, author of “Home 

Again,” etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; half bound, 75 cents. 

“ There are some good bits of dialogue and strong situations in the book.”— 
The Athenœum. 

“ Rich in imaginative beauty and fine insight into the mysteries of spiritual 
life.”— London Spectator. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. \ 


My Cousin, 
Miss Cinderella. 


From the French of ■ 

LEON DE TINSEAU. 


(T’A? Gainsborough Series, l) 

PW YORK 1 : 

D. APPLETON & CO. 


THE GAINSBOROUGH SERIES. 


Mrs. Gainsborough’s Diamonds. By Julian Hawthorne. 
A Struggle. A Story in Four Parts. By Barnet Phillips. 
Samuel Brohl and Company. From the French of Victor 
Cherbuliez. 

Gder-Wally: A Tale of the Tyrol. From the German 

Of WlLHELMINE VON HlLLERN. 

Modern Fishers of Men. By George L. Raymond. 

Dr. Heidenhofif’s Process. By Edward Bellamy. 
John-a-Dreams. By Julian Sturgis. 

An Accomplished Gentleman. By Julian Sturgis. 

An Attic Philosopher in Paris. From the French of 

Émile Souvestre. 

Miss Gascoigne. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell. 

The Story of Colette. From the Original, “ La Neuvaine 
de Colette.” 

A Little Maid of Acadie. By Marian C. L. Reeves. 
Orthodox. By Dorothea Gerard. 

My Cousin, Miss Cinderella. From the French of Leon 

de Tinseau. ’ 

Uniform style. 12mo, paper cover. Price, 25 cents each. 

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 

A FAIR EMIGRANT. 

By ROSA. MULHOLLAND, 

Author of “ Marcella Grace,” etc. 

“Appletons’ Town and Country Library.” 

ISmo, paper cover. - - Price, 50 cents ; in cloth, 75 cents. 

“ The ‘ fair emigrant ’ is a young lady who returns to her father's country for the 
purpose of trying to clear his name from the disgrace of a crime with which he was falsely 
charged. . . . A very interesting narrative.”— The Spectator. 

“ A capital novel.”— Scotsman. 


New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 6 Bond Street. 


STORIES OF ROMANTIC ADVENTURE, No. x. 

MR. FORTESCUE: 

AN ANDEAN ROMANCE . 

By WILLIAM WESTALL 

i2mo, paper cover. Price, 40 cents. 

The events of this story take place in England and in South America. In 
the latter country occurs a series of adventures as fresh, stirring, and remark- 
able as anything in romantic literature. 


“A PURE, FINE STORY.” 


the Secret of Fontaine-la-Croix 

A NOVEL. 

By MARGARET FIELD. 

“Appletons’ Town and Country Library.” i2mo, paper cover. Price, 50 cents. 

The heroine of this story is an Englishwoman, but the events occur prin- 
cipally in France. In the main the story is domestic in character, affording 
some charming pictures of life in a French chateau, but scenes in the Franco- 
German War are also depicted, and the action leads up to a striking and most 
dramatic situation. 

“ An interesting story well told.” — Christian Union. 

“Altogether a delightful story.” — Philadelphia Bulletin. 

“ A novel of unusual charm.” — Boston Traveller. 

“Does not flag from beginning to end.” —Boston Gazette. 

“ Marked by unaffected originality.” — Montreal Gazette. 

“As refreshing as rain after a burning drought.” — Philadelphia Bulletin. 


A BOOK FOR HOUSEKEEPERS. 

HOW SHE DID IT; 

Or, Comfort on $150 a Year. 

By MARY CRUGER. 

With an Illustration. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents. 

A record of actual experiences in building a small house, and in a system- 
atic method of economic living. The narrative in every particular is based on 
facts, and will be found most suggestive to people with small incomes. 


D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 1, 3, and 5 Bond St., New York. 


APPLETONS’ 

TOWN AND COUNTRY LIBRARY. 

PUBLISHED SEMI-MONTHLY. 


1. THE STEI3L HAMMER. By Louis Ulbach, author of “ Madame 

Gosselin.” 

2. EVE. A NOVEL. By S. Baring-Gould, author of “ Red Spider,” 

“ Little Tu’penny,” etc. 

3. FOR FIFTEEN YEARS. A SEQUEL TO “THE STEEL HAM- 

MER.” By Louis Ulbach. 

4. A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION. A NOVEL. By Lucas Malet, 

author of “ Colonel Enderby’s Wife,’* “ Mrs. Lorimer,” etc. 

5. THE DEEMSTER. A ROMANCE. By Hall Caine. (New edition.) 

6. A VIRGINIA INHERITANCE. By Edmund Pendleton, author 

of “A Conventional Bohemian.” (In cloth, $1.00.)' 

7. NINETTE : AN IDYLL OF PROVENCE. By the author of “ Véra.” 

8. “THE RIGHT HONOURABLE.” A ROMANCE OF SOCIETY 

AND POLITICS. By Justin McCarthy and Mrs. Campbell-Praed. 
(New editioh.)' 

9. THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. By Maxwell Grey. 

(A new edition.) 

10. MRS. LORIMER: A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE. By 

Lucas Malet^ author of “ Colonel Enderby’s Wife,” “A Counsel of 
Perfection,” etc. (A new edition.) 

11. THE ELECT. LADY. By George MacDonald, author of “Home 

Again,” etc. 

12. THE MYSTERY OF THE “ OCEAN STAR.” A COLLEC- 

TION OF MARITIME SKETCHES. By W. Clark Russell, author of 
“ The W reck of the ‘ Grosvenor,’ ” etc. 

13. ARISTOCRACY. A NOVEL. (In cloth, $1.00.) 

14. A RECOILING VENGEANCE. By Frank Barrett, author of 

“ The Great Ilesper,” etc. With Illustrations. 

15. THE SECRET OF FONT AINE-LA-CROIX. By Margaret Field. 

16. THE MASTER OF RATHKELLY. By Hawley Smart. 

17. DONOVAN : A Modern Englishman. By Edna Lyall. (A 

new edition.) (In cloth, $1.50.) 

18. THIS MORTAL COIL. By Grant Allen. 

19. A FAIR EMIGRANT. By Rosa Mulholland, author of “ Marcella 

Grace.” 

20. THE APOSTATE. A Romance. By Ernest Daudet. 

12mo, paper cover, price 50 cents each. 

(Also in binding, price 75 cents each, except where price is otherwise given.) 

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street; New York. 































» 











. 








• - 



























































' ' 1 j. ' 

















. 
















. 





















LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 










